il — 


Z^ »y y  ■ 

TO    BRAHMS 


<"  It 


DANIEL 

GREGORY 

MASON 


FROM    GRIEG 
BRAHMS 


TO 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO 
DALLAS   -    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


FROM    GRIEG    TO 
BRAHMS 

STUDIES    OF    SOME    MODERN 
COMPOSERS  AND  THEIR   ART 


BY 

DANIEL   GREGORY   MASON 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1921 

All  right*  rtttrvtd 


Copyright,  1902,  by 
The  Outlook  Company 


Published  November,  190Z. 


LIBRARY 

UMVERSn  Y  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SAM'A  BARBARA 


To  my  uncle 

Dr.  William  Mason 

who  has  iJDon  the  gratitude 

of  lovers  of  music  in  America 

I  dedicate  these  studies 

with  affection  and  respect 


PREFACE 


* 


USIC  may  be  hard  to  under- 
stand, but  musicians  are  men;" 
so  remarked  a  friend  of  mine 
when  I  was  first  planning 
these  essays.  The  sentence 
sums  up  very  happily  a  truth  I  have  con- 
stantly had  in  mind  in  writing  them.  As  all 
music,  no  matter  what  its  complexity  on  the 
technical  side,  is  in  essence  an  expression  of  per- 
sonal feeling,  and  as  the  qualities  of  a  man's 
personality  show  themselves  not  only  in  his 
works,  but  in  his  acts,  his  words,  his  face,  his 
handwriting  and  carriage  even,  it  has  seemed 
natural  and  fruitful,  in  these  studies,  to  seek 
acquaintance  with  the  musicians  through  ac- 
quaintance with  the  men. 

But  personal  expression  depends  not  alone 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

on  the  personality  of  the  artist ;  it  depends  also 
on  the  resources  of  art,  which  in  turn  are  the 
product  of  a  long,  slow  growth.  Accordingly, 
if  we  would  understand  the  individual  compo- 
sers, we  must  have  a  sense  of  the  scheme  into 
which  they  fall,  the  great  universal  evolution 
of  which  they  are  but  incidents.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  I  have  tried,  in  the  introductory 
essay  on  The  Appreciation  of  Music,  to  describe 
some  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  art, 
and  to  sketch  in  their  light  the  general  move- 
ment of  musical  history,  in  order  to  give  the 
reader  a  perspective  sense,  a  bird's-eye  view  o( 
the  great  army  of  artists  in  which  the  supreme 
masters  are  but  leaders  of  battalions  and  regi- 
ments. Without  this  sense  it  is  impossible  truly 
to  place  or  justly  to  estimate  any  individual. 

At  the  end  of  the  introduction  I  apply  the 
principles  worked  out  to  determining  in  a  gen- 
eral way  how  the  half  dozen  composers  to  be 
studied  are  related  to  modern  music  as  a  whole. 
My  result  is  that  although  they  are  practically 
contemporary,  they  are  by  no  means  peers  in 
the  scope  and  significance  of  their  work.  If  we 
arrange  them  in  the  order  of  their  influence  on 
art,  which  depends  upon  their  power  both  to 


PREFACE 

assimilate  previous  resources  and  to  add  new 
ones,  we  must  pass   "  from  Grieg  to  Brahms." 

The  purpose  of  the  last  essay  in  the  book, 
on  The  Meaning  of  Music,  will  be  obvious 
enough.  Just  as  the  introductory  essay  tries  to 
sketch  the  general  musical  environment,  as  de- 
termined by  basic  principles  and  developed  in 
history,  in  relation  to  which  alone  the  individ- 
uals discussed  can  be  understood,  so  the  epi- 
logue seeks  to  suggest  that  still  larger  environ- 
ment of  human  feeling  and  activity  on  which 
music,  like  everything  else,  depends  for  its  vital- 
ity. The  first  essay  considers  music  as  a  me- 
dium for  men,  the  last  considers  life  as  a  me- 
dium for  music. 

Itwouldbe  impossible  to  acknowledge  here  all 
that  these  studies,  particularly  the  first,  owe  to  the 
writings  of  others.  Perhaps  the  books  which 
have  most  influenced  my  treatment  of  musical 
aesthetics  are  Dr.  George  Santayana's  "  Sense  of 
Beauty"  and  Dr.  C.  Hubert  H.  Parry's  "  Evolu- 
tion of  the  Art  of  Music,"  though  I  have  got 
much  help  also  from  Dr.  William  James's  "Prin- 
ciples of  Psychology,"  from  Dr.  Josiah  Royce's 
books,  from  Mr.  Edward  Carpenter,  and  of 
course   from  Helmholtz,  Gurney,  Mr.  W.  H. 

k 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

Hadow,  and  the  other  standard  writers  on  mu- 
sical theory.  In  gathering  the  biographical 
material  I  have  had  much  cordial  and  skillful 
help  from  Miss  Barton,  of  the  Boston  Public 
Library,  for  which  I  here  record  my  thanks. 

Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
August  Z3,  1902. 


NOTE  TO  THE  THIRD  IMPRESSION 

Sir  Charles  Villiers  Stanford  has  pointed 
out  an  error  in  the  story  told  of  Brahms 
on  page  178.  It  was  not  the  Cambridge 
University  authorities  who  invited  Brahms 
to  write  a  new  work,  but  the  managers  of 
the  Leeds  Festivals,  who,  after  long  neglect 
of  his  already  printed  compositions,  asked 
him,  in  1887,  to  write  them  a  new  one; 
whereupon  he  returned  the  answer  described. 

New  York  City, 
May  loth,  1904 


CONTENTS 


PAOB 


I  Introduction:     The    Apprecia- 
tion OF  Music I 

II  Edvard  Grieg 47 

III  Antonin  Dvorak 7i 

IV  Camille  Saint-Saens      .     •     •     •  97 

V    CiSAR    FrANCK 121 

VI  Peter   Ilyitch  Tschaikowsky     .  149 

VII  Johannes  Brahms 173 

VIII   Epilogue:      The      Meaning     of 

Music 203 


LIST  OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


rACING 
PAGE 


Brahms  at  the  Piano Title 

From  a  charcoal  drawing  by  W.  von  Beckerath 

Grieg 49 

Dvorak 73 

Saint-Saens 99 

Franck 123 

tschaikowsky 15' 

Brahms I75 


I 

INTRODUCTION 

THE    APPRECIATION 

OF    MUSIC 


I NTROD  U  CTION 

THE    APPRECIATION 

OF    MUSIC 


O WEVER  interesting  may  be  the 
study  of  an  art  through  the  per- 
sonahties  of  the  artists  who  have 
produced  it, and  such  study,  since 
art  is  a  mode  of  human  expres- 
sion, is  indeed  essential,  it  must  be  supplemented 
by  at  least  some  general  knowledge  of  the  long 
continuous  evolution  in  which  the  work  of  the 
most  brilliant  individual  is  but  a  moment,  a 
phase.  The  quality  of  a  man's  work  in  art,  and 
especially,  as  will  be  seen  in  a  moment,  in  music, 
depends  not  alone  on  the  depth  of  his  character 
and  the  force  of  his  talent,  but  also  largely  on  the 
technical  resources  he  owes  to  others,  on  the 
means  for  expressing  himself  that  he  finds  ready 
to  his  hand.  Whatever  his  personal  powers  or 
limitations,  the  value  of  his  work  will  be  de- 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

termined  not  more  by  these  than  by  the  helps 
and  hindrances  of  his  artistic  inheritance. 

The  great  edifice  of  art,  in  fact,  is  like  those 
Gothic  cathedrals  on  which  generations  of  men 
successively  labored ;  thousands  of  common 
workmen  hewed  their  foundation  stones ;  finer 
minds,  architects,  smiths,  brass  founders,  glass 
makers  and  sculptors,  wrought  and  decorated 
the  superstructures ;  and  the  work  of  each, 
whatever  his  personal  skill  and  devotion,  was 
valuable  only  because  it  built  upon  and  added 
to  that  of  all  the  rest.  The  soaring  spires  are 
firmly  based  on  blocks  of  stone  ploddingly  ad- 
justed ;  the  windows,  often  of  such  a  perfect 
beauty  that  they  seem  created  rather  than  con- 
structed, had  nevertheless  to  be  built  up  bit  by 
bit ;  and  all  the  marvelous  organism  of  pillars, 
arches  and  buttresses  is  so  delicately  solid,  so 
precariously  stable,  that  had  one  stress  been  mis- 
calculated, one  joint  inaccurately  made,  the 
whole  would  collapse.  So  it  is  with  the  edifice 
of  art,  and  particularly  with  that  of  music,  which 
depends  for  its  very  material  on  the  labors  of 
musicians.  Pigments,  clay,  marble,  the  materi- 
als of  the  plastic  arts,  exist  already  in  the  world  ; 
but  the  whole  ladder  of  fixed  tones  on  which 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

music  is  built  is  the  product  of  man's  aesthetic 
sense,  and  had  to  be  created  slowly  and  labor- 
iously by  many  generations  of  men.  The  suc- 
cessions of  chords  which  every  banjo  player 
strums  in  his  accompaniments  were  the  subject 
of  long  trial  by  the  mediaeval  composers.  The 
hymn  tune  that  any  boy  can  write  is  modeled 
on  a  symmetrical  scheme  of  phrases  developed 
by  countless  experimenters.  It  took  men  cen- 
turies to  select  and  arrange  the  eight  tones  of 
the  ordinary  scale,  and  centuries  more  to  learn 
how  to  combine  them  in  chords.  And  the  most 
eloquent  modern  works  depend  on  this  long 
evolution  of  resources  just  as  inevitably  as  the 
Gothic  spire  rests  on  the  hewn  stones  so  care- 
fiilly  laid.  In  the  art,  as  in  the  cathedral,  the 
seen  rests  upon  the  unseen,  the  beautiful  upon 
the  solid,  the  complex  upon  the  simple,  the  new 
upon  the  old.  The  product  of  a  thousand  art- 
ists, music  is  as  dependent  on  each  as  the  coral 
reef  on  the  tiny  indispensable  body  of  each  in- 
sect ;  and  on  the  other  hand  the  individual 
musician,  whatever  his  ability,  is  great  only  as 
he  uses  the  equipment  his  fellows  have  prepared 
—  "the  greatest  is  the  most  indebted  man." 
I^  then,  we  would  justly  value  the  half  dozen 

5 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

composers  who  have  done  most  for  music  in  our 
day,  we  must  add  to  our  understanding  of  them 
as  persons  a  knowledge  of  the  general  develop- 
ment in  which  they  play  a  part ;  we  must  gain 
some  sense  of  that  great  process  of  musical 
growth  from  which  they  inherit  their  resources, 
to  which  they  make  their  various  contributions, 
and  in  relation  to  which  alone  they  can  be  fairly 
compared  and  appreciated.  After  examining 
the  general  course  of  musical  history,  ascertain- 
ing some  fundamental  principles,  and  applying 
these  principles  to  our  special  judgments,  we 
shall  be  able  to  perceive  the  greatest  musicians 
of  our  day  in  their  relations,  and  to  get  a  per- 
spective view  of  modern  music  in  which  they 
shall  take  their  proper  places. 


If  we  wish  to  get  an  idea  of  primeval  music, 
to  see  from  what  impulses  it  took  rise,  we  have 
only  to  study  the  musical  activities  of  children 
and  savages,  in  whom  we  have  primeval  man 
made  contemporary,  the  remote  past  brought 
conveniently  into  the  present  to  be  observed. 
When  we  make  such  a  study  we  find  that  both 
children  and  savages  express  their  feelings  by 

6 


APPRECIATION       OF      MUSIC 

gestures  and  cries,  that  under  the  sway  of  emo- 
tion they  either  dance  or  sing.  To  them  quiet, 
silent  feeling  is  impossible.  Are  they  joyful, 
they  leap  and  laugh  ;  are  they  angry,  they  strike 
and  shout ;  are  they  sad,  they  rock  and  moan. 
Moreover,  we  can  discriminate  the  kinds  of  feel- 
ing that  are  expressed  by  these  cries  and  gestures. 
Roughly  speaking,  bodily  movement  is  the  nat- 
ural outlet  of  active  vitality,  of  the  joy  of  life 
and  the  lust  of  living,  while  it  is  the  more  con- 
templative emotions — love,  grief,  reverie,  devo- 
tion— that  find  vocal  utterance.  The  war- 
dances  and  revels  of  savages,  accompanied  by 
drum  and  tomtom,  are  gesticulatory  ;  their  love- 
songs  and  ululations  over  the  dead  are  vocal. 
In  the  same  way  children  in  their  moments  of 
enthusiasm  are  wont  to  march  about  shouting 
and  stamping  in  time,  all  their  hmbs  galvanized 
with  nervous  force;  and  it  is  when  the  wave  of 
energy  has  passed  and  they  sit  on  the  floor  en- 
grossed in  blocks  or  dolls  that  they  sing  to  them- 
selves their  curious  undulating  chants.  Even  in 
ourselves  we  can  observe  the  same  tendencies, 
checked  though  they  be  by  counter-impulses  in 
our  more  complex  temperaments :  when  we  are 
gay  we  walk  briskly,  clicking  our  heels  in  time 

7 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

and  perhaps  whistling  a  catch  ;  in  our  dreamier 
hours  we  are  quiet,  or  merely  hum  a  tune  un- 
der our  breath.  Thus  through  all  human  na- 
ture runs  the  tendency  to  vent  feeling,  active 
and  contemplative,  in  those  bodily  movements 
and  vocal  utterances  which  underlie  the  two 
great  generators  of  music,  dance  and  song. 

Such  activities,  however,  are  by  no  means  as 
yet  dance  and  song.  At  first  they  are  no  more 
than  mere  reflex  actions,  as  spontaneous  and 
unthinking  as  the  "  Ow  "  of  the  man  who  stubs 
his  toe.  The  emotion  is  felt,  and  out  comes 
the  gesture  or  cry  ;  that  is  all.  It  is  the  organ- 
ism's way  of  letting  off  steam.  It  is  not  expres- 
sion, not  being  prompted  by  a  desire  to  com- 
municate the  feeling,  but  merely  by  the  impulse 
to  be  unburdened  of  it.  Before  there  can  be 
true  expression  or  communication,  there  must 
be  two  more  Hnks  added  to  the  chain  of  which 
these  automatic  activities  are  only  the  first. 
The  second  link  is  imitation.  According  to  a 
theory  widely  exploited  in  recent  years,  we  tend 
to  imitate  whatever  we  see  another  do.  With 
children  the  tendency  is  so  strong  that  a  large 
part  of  their  time  and  energy  is  devoted  to 
elaborate  impersonation  and  make-believe,  and 

s 


APPRECIATION       OF      MUSIC 

the  entire  basis  of  their  education  is  acquired 
through  this  directly  assimilative  faculty.  In 
adults  it  is  less  active,  but  every  sensitive  person 
knows  how  difficult  it  is  not  to  imitate  foreign 
accents,  stammering,  and  other  petty  manner- 
isms, and  few  are  so  callous  that  they  can  with- 
stand the  infection  of  strong  stimuli  like  the 
gestures  and  cries  of  emotion.  The  wailing 
baby  in  the  street  car,  who  moves  all  the  other 
babies  within  hearing  to  wail  also  (if  they  be  not 
already  at  it  independently)  ;  the  dog  baying 
the  moon  until  all  within  earshot  join  in  the 
serenade ;  the  negro  at  the  camp-meeting  clap- 
ping his  hands  until  the  whole  company  is  in  a 
rhythmic  ecstasy — these  are  examples  of  the 
contagion  of  cries  and  gestures.  Bearing  them 
in  mind,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  vocal  or  bod- 
ily acts  which  in  the  first  place  are  mere  re- 
flexes of  feeling,  performed  with  no  thought 
of  expression,  but  only  for  personal  easement, 
will  generally,  nevertheless,  prompt  similar  acts 
in  others.  The  performances  of  the  individual 
will  not  end  with  himself;  thanks  to  the  instinct 
of  imitation,  they  will  be  very  widely  copied. 

But  now — and  this  is  the  third  link  of  the 
chain — bodily  acts  set  up  mental  states,  and  a 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

man  cannot  gesticulate  or  vocalize  without  feel- 
ing the  emotions  of  which  his  actions  are,  as  we 
say,  expressive.  "  We  feel  sorry  because  we 
cry,"  writes  Professor  William  James  in  his 
brilliant,  paradoxical  way,  "  angry  because  we 
strike,  afraid  because  we  tremble ; "  and  wheth- 
er or  not  we  agree  with  his  extreme  view  that 
the  mental  state  is  entirely  a  reverberation  of 
bodily  disturbances,  we  cannot  but  realize  that 
in  all  these  cases  executing  the  expression  tends 
to  give  us  the  feeling.  He  who  persistently 
smiles  will  end  by  being  cheerful,  and  a  moder- 
ate amount  of  sighing  or  groaning  will  make 
any  one  melancholy.  Above  all,  the  imitation 
of  vocal  movements,  such  as  we  all  go  through 
at  least  incipiently  when  we  hear  melody,  and 
the  "  keeping  time  "  that  strong  dance-music 
so  irresistibly  prompts — these  actions  very 
noticeably  set  up  in  us  their  appropriate  states 
of  feeling.  We  not  only  imitate  the  lip  mo- 
tions and  throat  contractions  of  a  persuasive 
speaker  or  singer,  but  doing  so  fills  us  with  the 
emotion  that  prompts  his  utterance.  Tired  sol- 
diers not  only  step  out  to  a  potently  rhythmi- 
cal tune — that  is,  they  not  only  imitate  the  beat — 
but  they  actually  feel  less  weary,  more  energetic. 


APPRECIATION       OF       MUSIC 

SO  long  as  the  stimulus  lasts.  Once  a  bodily 
activity  is  set  up,  no  matter  how,  it  arouses  the 
mental  state  proper  to  it ;  in  a  word,  expression 
generates  emotion. 

Obviously,  then,  if  in  the  first  place  the  nat- 
ural outlets  of  emotional  excitement  are  bodily 
motions  and  vocal  sounds,  if  in  the  second 
place  the  observation  of  such  motions  and 
sounds  arouses  the  impulse  to  imitate  them, 
and  if  finally  this  imitation  produces  again  in 
the  imitator  the  states  of  mind  which  first  set  the 
whole  process  goiog,  then  these  motions  and 
sounds,  these  inchoate  germs  of  dance  and  song, 
possess  an  enormous  latent  power  of  expression, 
and  need  only  to  be  systematized  to  become  a 
wonderfully  eloquent  language.  Such  a  lan- 
guage, in  fact,  is  music. 

II 

At  this  point,  however,  it  is  important  not 
to  go  too  fast.  These  crude  gestures  and  cries 
by  which  primeval  man  expressed  his  feelings, 
though  they  were  the  germs  out  of  which  music 
grew,  were  as  yet  no  more  music,  which  is  not 
only  expressive  sound,  but  formed,  articulate 
sound,  than  an  infant's  cooings  are  speech.    So 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

far  they  were  mere  ebullitions,  purposeless  and 
formless  ;  before  they  could  become  communi- 
cative they  must  become  definite,  they  must 
take  on  some  organic  structure.  Now  gestures, 
bodily  movements,  are  very  easily  grouped  to- 
gether by  means  of  accent.  Every  walker  knows 
that  it  is  difficult  not  to  emphasize  alternate 
steps,  grouping  the  unaccented  with  the  accented 
into  a  cluster  of  two.  Every  waltzer  makes  a 
similar  grouping  of  three  steps,  one  accented, 
the  other  two  subordinate.  Some  such  system 
of  grouping  is  instinctively  adopted  whenever 
we  have  a  series  of  impressions  regularly  re- 
curring in  time.  Let  the  reader,  listening  to 
the  ticking  of  a  watch,  note  how  impossible  it 
is  to  attend  to  each  tick  by  itself.  He  will 
inevitably  group  them  in  twos ;  the  accent  may 
come  on  the  first  or  on  the  last  of  the  group,  but 
he  cannot  hear  them  as  exactly  equal,  any  more 
than  in  walking  he  can  put  exactly  equal  stress 
on  each  step.  It  was  this  tendency  of  the  mind 
to  group  its  impressions  on  a  basis  of  equal  time 
measurements  and  unequal  accents  that  led  at 
the  dawn  of  musical  history  to  meter  or  rhythm, 
which  is  as  persistent  in  music  as  it  is  in  po- 
etry.    Metrical  form  was  the  natural  means  of 


APPRECIATION       OF      MUSIC 

giving  definition  to  bodily  movements,  and  as 
soon  as  it  was  developed  enough  to  produce 
regular,  easily  imitated  steps  out  of  the  chaotic 
gestures  of  naive  feeling,  Dance  was  born. 

At  first,  of  course,  metrical  form  was  stum- 
bled upon  blindly.  Having  two  arms  and  two 
legs,  men  naturally  moved  with  a  symmetry 
that  gradually  impressed  their  minds  ;  obliged 
by  the  facts  of  anatomy  to  group  their  motions 
in  twos,  they  soon  took  the  hint,  and  beat  their 
drums  or  struck  their  cymbals  accordingly. 
The  primeval  dance  was  doubtless  the  march. 
But  soon  they  began  to  carry  out  the  principle 
they  had  thus  chanced  upon,  and  despite  anat- 
omy devised  the  group  of  three.  The  exist- 
ence of  triple  meter  is  all  the  proof  needed  that 
metrical  form  is  essentially  a  process  of  intelli- 
gence, not  a  physical  fatality  ;  men  grouped 
their  steps  or  leaps  or  drum-taps  in  twos  or  in 
threes  because  such  groups  were  easy  to  make, 
to  imitate,  and  to  remember.  And  once  per- 
ceived, no  matter  how,  such  groupings  tended 
to  cling,  to  perpetuate  themselves.  For  they 
were  definite,  memorable  forms,  and  they  sur- 
vived all  haphazard  gestures  and  vague  motions 
by  virtue  of  the  law  that  what  is  adapted  to  its 

13 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

environment  will  live  longer  than  what  is  not. 
In  this  case  the  environment  was  the  human 
mind  ;  and  the  definite  organisms,  the  metrical 
forms,  survived  and  developed  because  the  mind 
could  remember  them,  while  all  the  vague  ges- 
tures out  of  which  they  grew  shared  the  fate 
of  what  is  indefinite,  accidental,  inorganic. 
Thus  Dance,  which  was  gesticulation  systema- 
tized by  metrical  form,  emerged  and  grew  in  the 
human  mind,  like  an  animal  in  a  congenial  hab- 
itat. 

For  a  long  whil*^  <-he  metrical  forms  that  men 
could  perceive  ana  remember  were  most  rudi- 
mentary. Probably  it  took  them  centuries  to 
grasp  the  simple  group  of  three,  the  basis  of 
such  accent-schemes  as  the  waltz  and  the  ma- 
zurka. Even  to-day,  psychologists  agree,  we 
are  unable  to  grasp  a  group  of  seven,  and  we 
perceive  larger  groups  than  three  only  as  com- 
pounded of  the  elementary  twos  and  threes.* 
But  gradually  men  learned  to  recombine  their 
groups  in  still  larger  forms,  of  which  the  first 

*Thu8  "4/4  time"  is  a  compound  of  twos,  **  6/8  time"  is 
a  compound  of  threes,  and  the  interesting  5/4  measure,  so  effect- 
ive in  the  second  movement  of  Tschaikowsky's  Pathetic  Sym- 
phony, is  a  compound  of  twos  and  threes  regularly  alternating; 


APPRECIATION       OF       MUSIC 

groups  constituted  the  elements.  Just  as  in 
chemistry  the  basic  elements  like  oxygen  and 
hydrogen,  nitrogen  and  carbon,  can  combine 
only  in  a  few  simple  ways,  but  the  compound 
molecules  thus  produced  can  recombine  into 
the  myriad  substances  of  organic  chemistry,  the 
sugars  and  starches  and  all  the  rest,  so  the  sim- 
ple dual  and  triple  measures  of  music  can  be 
built  into  an  infinite  variety  of  figures  and 
phrases.  In  early  dance  and  folk-song  a  more 
and  more  complex  metrical  plan  thus  slowly 
developed.  Two  or  more  of  the  simple  groups 
of  beats,  called  measures,  were  combined  into 
a  larger  group,  a  recognizable  figure  or  motif; 
then  again  motifs  were  combined  into  still 
larger  phrases  ;  and  finally,  as  the  musical  me- 
dium became  more  definite,  plastic  and  various, 
phrases  were  combined  in  many  different  types 
of  design,  into  complete  "  tunes."  In  all  these 
regroupings,  the  wonderful  variety  of  which  is 
one  of  the  most  precious  resources  of  modern 
music,  the  fundamental  procedure  was  the  same 
— elements  alike  in  duration,  but  different  in 
accent  or  significance,  were  made  to  cohere  in 
a  group  or  form.  Just  as  in  verse  the  feet,  or 
elementary  metrical  forms  whose  elements  are 

«5 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

single  syllables  of  equal  duration  but  unequal 
stress,  are  combined  into  lines,  and  later  these 
lines  into  stanzas,  so  in  music  measures  are 
combined  in  figures,  and  figures  built  up  into 
phrases,  and  phrases  into  tunes.  And  as  the 
diversity  of  the  possible  forms  becomes  greater 
and  greater  as  we  advance  from  foot  to  stanza, 
there  being  few  forms  of  feet  but  many  of 
stanza,  so  metrical  form  in  music  becomes  more 
and  more  complex  as  it  evolves,  and  though 
all  music  must  be  built  out  of  dual  or  triple 
measures,  it  may  be  built  into  tunes  of  an  infi- 
nite variety  of  pattern.  Each  new  complexity, 
however,  must  be  intelligible  ;  it  cannot  be  in- 
troduced until  men  have  mastered  the  simpler 
groups  out  of  which  it  is  compounded.  Bee- 
thoven's wondrously  intricate  texture,  Brahms's 
soaring  phrases,  would  be  meaningless  to  us 
had  we  not  inherited  from  thousands  of  ances- 
tors a  sense  of  the  system  of  regular  accents 
and  duration  on  which  their  complexities  are 
superposed.  From  the  days,  ages  ago,  when 
savages  first  beat  a  drum  in  simple  march 
rhythm,  up  to  to-day,  when  Brahms  builds  up 
his  extraordinarily  intricate  fabrics,  with  their 
elaborate  prosody,  their  "  augmentation,"  and 

i6 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

"  diminution,"  and  "  shifted  rhythm,"  the  evo- 
lution of  metrical  form  has  been  single  and  con- 
tinuous ;  each  advance  has  been  built  on  pre- 
vious achievements.  There  are  no  dropped 
stitches  in  this  kind  of  knitting. 

Metrical  form,  however,  is  not  the  only  sort 
of  form  by  which  sounds  can  be  combined.  It 
is  the  natural  organizing  agent  of  Dance,  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  develops  out  of  the  movements 
expressive  of  men's  active  impulses  ;  but  human 
nature  has  also  its  contemplative  side,  and  this, 
expressing  itself  in  vocal  utterance,  under- 
goes another  sort  of  development  and  results 
in  Song.  What,  then,  are  the  means  by  which 
Song  is  defined,  by  which  vocal  sounds  are  or- 
ganized into  intelligible  and  memorable  forms  ? 
Before  we  answer  this  question  it  will  be  well  to 
consider  for  a  moment  a  more  general  one. 
What,  in  general,  is  a  form  ? 

We  shall  be  helped  to  define  a  form  in  general 
by  looking  back  to  the  metrical  forms  we  have  just 
been  studying.  These,  we  have  seen,  are  groups 
or  clusters  of  impressions,  held  together  by  some 
similarity,  yet  also  differentiated  by  some  con- 
trast. The  two  or  three  beats  of  the  measure- 
group  are  similar  in  duration,  yet   different  in 

«7 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

accent.  And  without  both  the  similarity  and 
the  difference,  the  unity  and  the  variety,  they 
would  not  be  a  group.  Without  similarity  they 
would  be  a  haphazard  collection,  a  chaos ;  with- 
out difference  they  would  all  fuse  together  in 
one  indistinguishable  mass.  In  other  words, 
they  exempHfy  a  general  fact  about  forms — 
namely,  that  the  elements  must  be  alike  enough 
to  be  associated,  and  yet  different  enough  to  be 
discriminated.  If  we  cannot  associate  them  we 
cannot  feel  them  as  a  group ;  they  will  not  co- 
here. If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  dis- 
criminate them,  then  do  they  equally  fail  to 
make  up  a  form  ;  they  simply  mingle  together 
into  a  homogeneous  lump.  The  organs  of  an 
organism  must  be,  then,  related,  yet  different ; 
the  elements  of  a  form  must  be  both  similar  and 
dissimilar.  Unless  they  are  both  we  cannot 
perceive  them  as  linked,  yet  distinct.  Bearing 
this  general  fact  about  forms  in  mind,  we  may 
investigate  the  kinds  of  form  that  underlie 
Song, 

Probably  every  one  who  has  listened  to  the 
whistling  of  factories  in  a  large  city  at  noon  has 
had  the  curious  experience  of  suddenly  hearing 
amid  the  meaningless  din  a  pair  of  tones  that 

i8 


APPRECIATION       OF      MUSIC 

mysteriously  mate  and  merge.  The  other  tones 
seem  entirely  accidental;  they  have  no  relation 
to  each  other,  and  give  one  merely  a  sense  of 
vague  annoyance.  But  these  two  form  an  intel- 
ligible group  ;  we  are  able  to  grasp  them  to- 
gether, and  we  take  an  indescribable  pleasure  in 
thus  feeling  them  as  parts  of  one  whole.  Here 
is  an  instance  of  another  sort  of  musical  form 
than  the  metrical,  a  sort  that  we  may  call  har- 
monic. Here  the  grouping  takes  place  on  a 
platform  not  of  time,  but.  of  pitch  ;  the  two  ele- 
ments of  the  group  have  no  metrical  relations, 
but  in  pitch  they  are  somehow  related.  Now 
this  sore  of  pitch  relationship  has  played  a  vital 
part  in  music,  a  part  hardly  secondary  to  that  of 
time  relationship  ;  so  that  an  understanding  of 
it  is  important  enough  to  delay  us  here  a  mo- 
ment with  some  rather  dry  technical  facts  on 
which  it  depends. 

Ordinary  musical  tones,  the  notes  of  the 
voice,  the  violin,  and  the  piano,  for  example, 
simple  as  they  sound,  are,  like  ordinary  white 
light,  rather  complex  compounds  of  many  sim- 
ple elements.  There  are  in  them  seven  or  eight 
constituent  or  "  partial  "  tones,  quite  distinctly 
audible  to  the  trained  ear  or  to  the  untrained 

«9 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

ear  armed  with  suitable  instruments  ;  and  these 
partial  tones,  produced  by  vibrations  in  the 
sound-emitting  body  whose  rates  are  regularly 
related,  bear  a  certain  fixed  relation  to  each 
other,  like  the  spectrum-colors  that  compose 
white  light.  Not  only  this,  but  each  partial 
tone  arouses  its  own  proper  sensation  in  the  ear 
by  stimulating  there  one  of  the  minute  filaments 
called  the  cords  of  Corti,  each  of  which  vi- 
brates sympathetically  to  a  tone  of  given  pitch 
and  to  no  other.  Now  we  are  to  imagine  that 
when  an  ordinary  musical  tone  is  sounded,  seven 
or  eight  of  these  little  cords  immediately 
start  a-tremble,  and  send  to  the  brain  their  mes- 
sages, which  combine  there  into  the  composite 
impression  we  name  "  a  tone."  If  now  another 
tone  is  sounded,  one  which  starts  into  motion 
another  set  of  filaments,  and  if  furthermore 
there  is  one  filament  now  set  in  motion  that  was 
also  excited  by  the  first  compound  tone — if,  in 
other  words,  the  two  tones  happen  to  have  a 
partial  tone  in  common,  which  in  both  instances 
excites  the  same  filament  in  the  ear,  then  we 
shall  have  a  sense  of  close  relationship  between 
them ;  they  will  make  together  a  harmonic 
group  or  form.      This,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is 


APPRECIATION       OF       MUSIC 

what  happens  with  any  two  tones  that  form 
what  is  called  a  consonant  interval  with  each 
other,  an  "  octave,"  a  "  fifth,"  or  a  "  fourth." 
If  tones  X  and  Y,  for  instance,  are  an  octave 
apart,  the  second  partial  tone  of  X  will  be  iden- 
tical with  the  first  of  Y;  if  they  are  a  fifth  apart, 
the  third  partial  tone  of  X  will  be  identical  with 
the  second  of  Y;  if  they  are  a  fourth  apart,  the 
fourth  partial  tone  of  X  will  correspond  with  the 
third  of  Y.  It  is  obvious,  then,  that  all  these 
intervals  will  give  us  the  sense  of  harmonic  form; 
for  they  provide  all  the  necessary  conditions  of 
a  form,  having  enough  in  common  to  be  asso- 
ciated by  our  minds,  and  enough  not  in  com- 
mon (their  dissimilar  partial  tones)  to  be  dis- 
tinguished. When  the  partial  tone  in  common 
is  so  high,  and  therefore  so  weak,  that  it  im- 
presses us  but  slightly,  we  shall  have  little  or 
no  sense  of  their  being  related  ;  such  is  the  case 
in  the  so-called  imperfect  consonances  and  the 
dissonances.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  all  the 
most  prominent  partial  tones  of  one  exist  in  the 
Other,  they  will  fuse  into  one  impression  in  our 
minds,  losing  the  characteristic  of  form  entirely, 
as  is  the  case  to  some  extent  with  the  octave 
and  entirely  with  the  unison.     But  when,  as  in 

SI 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

the  case  of  fifths  and  fourths,  there  are  both  a 
distinctly  audible  partial  tone  in  common  and 
others  not  in  common,  then  we  shall  have  true 
harmonic  forms. 

So  much  technical  detail  will  be  forgiven  by 
the  reader  who  can  at  all  realize  how  profound- 
ly the  entire  history  of  music  has  been  affected 
by  these  acoustic  and  physiological  facts.  We 
have  already  .  seen  how  folk -music  slowly 
wrought  out  the  complex  metrical  forms  based 
upon  time  grouping.  In  the  same  way,  eccle- 
siastical music  wrought  out,  slowly  and  labo- 
riously, the  harmonic  and  melodic  forms  that 
were  based  upon  pitch-grouping.  For  a  long 
time  vocal  utterance  was  defined  only  by  cer- 
tain simple  intervals  like  the  fall  of  the  fourth, 
which  formed  the  cadences  of  Greek  dramatic 
recitation  and  of  mediaeval  Christian  intoning. 
Gradually  ornamental  notes  were  introduced  as 
approaches  to  the  final  note ;  these  were  varied 
in  pitch,  and  new  ones  added,  until  finally  there 
resulted  the  ancient  modes,  precursors  of  our 
scale.  Then,  when  two  melodies  began  to  be 
sung  at  once,  the  intervals  of  the  octave,  fifth, 
and  fourth  were  again  called  into  requisition, 
and  made  the  bases  of  primitive  harmony.     In 


APPRECIATION       OF       MUSIC 

the  old  Organum  of  the  Middle  Ages,  two 
voices,  a  fifth  apart,  gave  the  same  melody, 
just  as  with  the  Greeks,  in  the  process  called 
"  magadising,"  two  voices  sang  the  same  tune, 
an  octave  apart.  So,  step  by  step,  pitch  rela- 
tions were  perceived  and  utilized.  In  all  stages 
of  the  long  progress,  whether  the  interval 
chosen  was  the  octave  or  the  fifth  or  the  fourth, 
and  whether  the  tones  were  sounded  in  succes- 
sion as  a  melodic  step  or  simultaneously  as  a 
chord,  the  guiding  principle  was  the  same; 
tones  were  grouped  together  which  had  pitch- 
form,  which  had  partial  tones  in  common  and 
others  not  in  common.  A  harmonic  form,  like 
a  metrical  form,  was  always  a  cluster  of  tones 
that  could  be  both  associated  and  distinguished. 
It  was  a  long  time  before  these  two  means  of 
organizing  sound  were  used  in  combination. 
Until  the  seventeenth  century  metrical  form 
was  chiefly  used,  quite  naturally,  to  define  the 
gesticulatory  part  of  musical  material,  the  prod- 
uct of  active  emotion,  while  harmonic  form 
gave  coherence  to  the  vocal  part,  the  product  of 
contemplative  or  religious  emotion.  Primitive 
dance  either  neglected  pitch  relationship  entire- 
ly, as  in  that  kind  of  savage  music  which  uses 

•J 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

only  drums,  tomtoms,  clappers  and  such  per- 
cussive instruments,  or  used  only  the  simplest 
intervals  like  the  fall  of  the  fourth  or  the  rise  of 
the  fifth.  And  in  ecclesiastical  Song,  all  through 
the  Middle  Ages,  metrical  regularity  was  not 
only  not  sought  for — it  was  avoided.  Even  in 
the  highly  artistic  song  of  the  great  choral  epoch 
which  culminated  in  Palestrina  there  was  no 
rhythm.  Phraseology  depended  entirely  on 
the  words.  Composers  avoided  anything  like 
an  appearance  of  even  sections,  in  sharp  de- 
marcation, balancing  each  other,  such  as  we  now 
demand.  They  liked  rather  to  have  their  melo- 
dies cross  and  interlace  like  the  strands  in  a 
basket,  making  a  texture  solid  but  inorganic. 
To  them  coherence  was  a  matter  merely  of 
the  individual  voices  ;  music  held  together 
like  a  rope  rather  than  like  a  crystal.  In- 
deed, any  deeper  harmonic  unity  was  not 
feasible  until  they  had  gained  more  experi- 
ence in  tone  relationship.  But  eventually  the 
secular  composers  of  the  last  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  among  whom  Arcangelo 
Corelli  is  a  typical  figure,  learned  to  utilize  both 
kinds  of  form,  making  them  supplement  and 
reinforce  each   other  in  all  sorts  of  interesting 

«4 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

and  unexpected  ways.  With  Corelli,  pure 
music  emerges  as  an  independent  art,  beautiful 
as  sculpture  and  promising  new  powers  of  ex- 
pression. By  his  successors  this  new  promise 
was  realized  with  surprising  rapidity.  Con- 
stantly growing  more  independent  of  extra- 
neous aids,  developing,  thanks  to  the  fruitful 
interaction  of  metrical  and  harmonic  grouping, 
an  unprecedented  richness  and  variety,  music 
became  m  the  hands  of  Bach  and  Beethoven  a 
strong,  flexible  and  efficient  fabric,  adapted  to 
all  phases  of  expression  and  capable  of  forming 
the  most  complex  and  self-sufficient  structures. 
Evolved  from  the  crude  gestures  and  cries  of 
naive  feeling  by  a  never-ceasing,  ever-widening 
exertion  of  man's  intelligence,  absolute  music 
has  become  in  some  respects  the  most  eloquent 
and  penetrative  of  the  arts. 

Ill 

Form  in  music,  however,  notwithstanding 
its  origin  as  a  means  of  defining  those  emo- 
tional expressions  which  without  it  would  have 
remained  vague,  unimitable,  and  immemorable, 
is  much  more  than  a  means  of  definition.  At 
first  practiced  as  a  means  to  an  end,  it  soon  be- 
as 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

came  an  end  in  itself.  For  the  perception  o( 
relations,  the  mental  activity  which  groups  im- 
pressions, is  not  merely  useful  ;  it  is  profoundly, 
indescribably  delightful.  Calling  the  mind  into 
activity  just  as  sensation  calls  the  senses,  it  is  a 
far  deeper  source  of  pleasure  than  sensation  can 
ever  be,  because  the  mind  far  exceeds  the 
senses  in  the  subtlety,  variety  and  independence 
of  its  action.  When,  therefore,  the  primitive 
musicians  first  made  their  syntheses  of  gestures 
and  cries  they  discovered  a  novel  pleasure,  alto- 
gether more  delicious  than  the  crude  joys  of 
sensation  and  expression.  Before  they  made 
such  syntheses  they  had  merely  enjoyed  the 
sweetness  of  tones,  and  taken  satisfaction  in  ex- 
pressing their  feelings ;  but  when  once  they 
learned  to  group  their  expressive  tones  together, 
to  feel  the  subtle  bonds  which  bound  them  into 
clear  and  salient  unity,  then  they  felt  a  joy  alto- 
gether new  and  on  a  higher  plane,  they  felt 
true  aesthetic  delight.  Here  was  not  merely  a 
passive,  or  at  most  an  automatic  process  ;  here 
was  a  truly  creative  activity,  a  conscious  and  free 
manipulation  of  materials.  Mere  hearing,  how- 
ever delicious,  mere  expression,  however  grate- 
ful, could   not   give  this  sense  of  mastery,  of 

z6 


APPRECIATION       OF       MUSIC 

comprehension,  of  insight.  Beauty  alone, 
beauty  depending  on  consciously  made  compari- 
sons and  contrasts,  can  give  the  highest  aesthetic 
delight,  the  delight  in  form.  And  so,  like 
painters  who,  using  form  at  first  to  define  their 
material,  come  quickly  to  a  realization  of  its  in- 
herent value,  and  finally,  if  they  be  true  artists, 
value  its  pure  beauties  of  line  and  balance  and 
composition  more  highly  than  any  mere  rich- 
ness of  color  or  of  expression,  musicians,  in  the 
degree  of  their  true  musicianship,  came  to  prize 
the  intrinsic  beauty  of  music  above  all  its  other 
qualities. 

Sometimes,  doubtless,  they  carried  their  de- 
votion too  far.  In  certain  periods  and  indi- 
viduals the  love  of  formal  beauty  has  entirely 
eclipsed  pleasure  in  expression.  Unable  to  at- 
tend at  once  to  expression  and  to  beauty,  many 
composers,  and  in  some  periods  all,  have  de- 
voted their  entire  energy  to  the  quest  for  formal 
perfection.  Thus  in  the  work  of  the  Nether- 
land  masters  of  early  counterpoint,  in  some  of 
Bach's  ingenious  weavings,  and  in  much  of  the 
music  of  Haydn  and  his  contemporaries,  the 
search  for  purely  plastic  qualities  goes  on  with 
little  thought  of  the  original  emotional  burden 

27 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

of  the  material  that  is  being  forrnulated.  To 
such  men  form  was  much  more  than  a  means 
of  defining  expression  ;  it  was  an  end  in  itself, 
and  an  end  worth  a  lifetime  of  painstaking,  de- 
voted effort 

And  yet,  justifiable  as  their  feeling  was,  in- 
dispensable as  their  labors  were  to  that  devel- 
opment without  which  the  expressive  power  of 
music  would  itself  have  remained  rudimentary, 
it  is  not  to  their  view,  but  to  a  more  universal 
one,  that  we  must  look  to  find  a  rounded  theory 
of  expression  and  form.  If  it  be  a  mistake  to 
neglect  the  latter  for  the  former,  as  they  well 
saw,  it  is  equally  a  mistake  to  prize  form  with 
too  exclusive  an  enthusiasm.  For  beauty  is 
itself  one  of  the  most  potent  means  of  ex- 
pression. Our  minds  are  not  made  up  of 
hermetic  compartments,  but  are  so  permeable, 
so  conductive,  that  an  eloquent  thing  is 
made  more  eloquent  by  being  also  beautiful. 
The  impression  of  beauty  reverberates  end- 
lessly, intensifying  all  that  is  associated  with 
it.  The  general  atmosphere  transfigures  every 
feature.  If  the  whole  is  fair,  no  detail  will 
be  entirely  without  its  appeal  to  our  kindled 
imaginations,  but  if  the  whole  is  formless,  no 

z8 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

single  phrase,  however  impassioned,  can  affect 
us  very  deeply.  The  truth  is,  then,  that  form 
and  expression  in  music  are  as  essential  to  each 
other  as  objects  and  light  in  the  world  of  vision. 
No  radiance  of  illumination  will  satisfy  the  eye 
if  there  is  nothing  to  see,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  loveliest  things  will  give  little  pleas- 
ure in  the  dark.  To  be  beautiful  they  must 
be  suffused  in  light.  Similarly  the  phrases  of 
music,  to  be  truly  moving,  must  be  suffused  in 
beauty.  The  greatest  masters  clearly  realized 
this.  Bach  in  his  masterpieces,  Beethoven 
nearly  always,  and  Brahms  in  his  inspired 
hours,  acted  on  the  principle  that  the  two  ele- 
ments must  exist  side  by  side,  subtly  and  po- 
tently reacting  upon  each  other.  Their  practice, 
indeed,  unanimously  confirms  the  theory  of 
musical  effect  which  has  now  been  briefly 
sketched,  and  which  may  be  more  briefly  sum- 
marized before  we  pass  on  to  deduce  from  it  some 
general  canons  of  appreciation  and  criticism. 

Music,  we  have  seen,  originates  in  the  spon- 
taneous gestures  and  cries  made  by  primitive 
man  under  the  sway  of  emotion^  imitated  by 
observers,  and  arousing  in  them  the  same  feel- 
ings.    As  intelligence  dawns,  men  see  that  th!S 

*9 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

triple  process  of  spontaneous  action,  imitation 
and  reduplicated  feeling  affords  a  basis  for  a 
language  of  emotion,  a  language  that  needs, 
however,  to  be  somehow  defined  and  articulated. 
Articulation  gradually  follows  by  means  of  the 
grouping  in  time  which  develops  the  gestures  of 
active  feeling  into  Dance,  and  the  grouping  in 
pitch  which  develops  the  utterances  of  con- 
templative feeling  into  Song.  Eventually  the 
two  modes  of  grouping  are  combined,  and 
music  becomes  an  independent  art.  Mean- 
while, the  forms  at  first  adopted  for  the  sake  of 
mere  definition  become  the  basis  of  a  new  and 
deeper  delight,  aesthetic  beauty,  which  is  sought 
for  both  as  ancillary  to  expression  and  for  itself 
alone.  Finally,  beauty  of  form  reacts  potently  on 
eloquence  of  expression,  and  the  most  universal 
composers,  recognizing  the  interdependence  of 
the  two  elements,  produce  the  highest  type  of  pure 
music,  music  in  which  beauty  is  based  upon  ex- 
pression and  expression  transfigured  by  beauty. 

IV 

The  principles  we  now  have  before  us,  in- 
teresting as  they  are  in  themselves,  must  finally 
vindicate   their  worth   by  helping   us  to  form 

30 


APPRECIATION       OF      MUSIC 

sound  opinions  of  musical  tendencies  and  of  in- 
dividual composers  ;  they  must  provide  a  cor- 
rective for  the  whims  and  freaks  of  prejudice, 
and  a  basis  for  that  intelligent  and  systematic 
criticism  which  takes  account  both  of  a  man's 
qualities  and  of  his  defects  before  assigning  him 
his  place  in  the  general  artistic  movement. 
With  them  in  mind,  we  should  be  able  to  avoid 
the  current  one-sided  and  partial  views,  and  also 
to  attain  that  positive  insight  into  the  nature  of 
music  which  alone  can  give  our  opinions  sanity, 
liberality  and  perspective. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  it  will  be  well  to  turn 
their  light  on  certain  dangerous  half-truths, 
which,  constantly  cropping  up  in  musical  opin- 
ions, are  hardly  less  misleading  than  complete 
fallacies.  The  two  most  persistent  and  mis- 
chievous of  such  half-truths  are  those  which 
neglect  one  aspect  of  the  dual  nature  of  music, 
which  ignore  expression  or  repudiate  form.  Of 
the  first,  the  half-truth  so  frequently  formulated 
in  the  phrase,  "  Music  is  a  kind  of  audible 
mathematics,"  it  is  not  necessary  to  say  much. 
Those  dryly  ingenious  persons  who  rejoice  in  a 
fugue  of  Bach  much  as  they  enjoy  an  intricate 
problem  in  calculus,  failing  to  perceive  the  warm 

3« 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

human  heart  that  animates  the  skeleton,  form  a 
minority  which  gets  little  attention  from  the 
mass  of  music-lovers.  The  half-truth  which 
neglects  expression  will  not,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  ever  gain  a  large  following.  Far  more 
dangerous  is  the  opposite  fallacy,  which,  repudi- 
ating form,  asserts  that  expression  is  all,  that 
"  music  is  the  language  of  the  emotions."  This 
phrase,  without  any  qualifications,  is  the  creed 
of  the  sentimentalists.  Their  ranks  assemble 
all  varieties  of  rhapsodical,  ill-balanced  tempera- 
ments, from  the  young  girl  who  "dotes  on 
Wagner  "  to  the  old  lady  with  curls  who  thinks 
that  "music  leads  us  up  to  the  higher  life." 
The  sentimentalists  sin,  perhaps,  not  so  much 
by  commission  as  by  omission.  So  far  as  they 
are  able  they  appreciate  music,  for  they 
feel  it  emotionally,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  half 
its  reason  for  being  is  its  appeal  to  the  emotions. 
But  they  fail  to  realize  that  it  must  be  beauti- 
ful as  well  as  moving,  that  all  its  lineaments  of 
expression  must  be  held  in  orderly  relation  with 
a  larger  integral  beauty  of  form.  They  fancy 
that  form,  which  in  reality  enhances  expression, 
is  somehow  at  odds  with  it,  that  the  mind  and 
the  feelings  are  natural  enemies.     Satisfied  with 

3» 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

thrills  and  tremors,  they  do  not  ask,  in  their 
music,  for  meaning  and  order.  They  fancy 
that  to  listen  heedfully,  attentively,  analytically, 
is  somehow  to  pull  out  the  petals  of  art  and 
strew  them  in  the  dust.  Analysis  is  a  desecrat- 
ing process.  You  should  not  focus  your  ears, 
make  the  image  clear ;  you  should  swoon  in  a 
delicious  haze  of  sensation  and  suggestion.  But 
one  can  analyze  without  dissecting  ;  one  can  rec- 
ognize that  a  flower  has  petals  without  pulling 
them  out ;  and  indeed  it  is  hard  to  imagine  any 
one  appreciating  the  true  loveliness  of  a  flower, 
its  formed,  articulated  beauty,  without  such  rec- 
ognition. So  in  music,  the  true  lover  of  melody 
will  be  in  no  danger  of  confusing  Beethoven's 
Hymn  of  Joy  with  Schumann's  Warum  because 
of  the  trance  of  nebulous  feeling  into  which  they 
throw  him.  He  will  pay  them  the  tribute  of 
listening  to  them  attentively,  of  noting  the  vari- 
ous charms  of  their  phraseology  and  expression 
as  he  would  note  the  diflTerence  of  meter  and  ef- 
fect between  a  sonnet  of  Shakespeare  and  a  song 
of  Burns.  Music  is  not  poorer,  but  richer,  for  its 
marvelous  intricacies  of  structure,  and  the  senti- 
mentality which  hates  clear  definition  is  not  high 
sentiment,  but  misconception  or  insensibility. 

33 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

It  is  a  suggestive  fact,  however,  that  the  sen- 
timental attitude  is  found  among  us,  not  only  in 
music,  but  everywhere.  It  is  the  tendency  of 
the  day  to  confuse  acquiring  with  assimilating, 
to  fancy  that  wealth  of  experience  is  better  than 
self-mastery  and  intelligent  possession.  Heed- 
lessness is  our  besetting  sin.  We  skim  books, 
"  do  **  picture  galleries,  talk  at  the  opera,  inter- 
rupt in  conversation,  and  gobble  our  food. 
Metaphorically,  as  well  as  actually,  we  swallow 
more  than  we  can  digest,  imagining  that  if  we 
only  subject  ourselves  to  enough  impressions 
we  shall  become  connoisseurs.  We  value  quan- 
tity rather  than  quality,  in  everything  from 
bric-a-brac  to  education ;  and  it  is  quite  to  be 
expected  that  we  should  reckon  the  value  of 
music  by  the  number  of  shivers  it  can  give  us. 
But  we  are  nevertheless  capable  of  a  wiser  atti- 
tude. We  have  it  in  us  to  learn  that  feelings 
are  of  no  use  until  they  are  related  to  the  cen- 
tral personality,  that  impressibility  is  not  yet 
dignity,  that  to  be  informed  is  not  necessarily 
to  be  educated — that,  in  a  word,  possession  of 
any  sort  is  not  an  external  fact,  but  an  inward 
control.  We  may  take  a  facile  interest  In  the 
sentimentalists  and  the  enthusiasts — the  people 

34 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

with  "  temperament " — but  at  heart  we  know 
that  those  passions  are  deepest  which  are  most 
firmly  dominated  by  will,  that  he  is  freest  who 
obeys  the  highest  law,  and  that  "temperament" 
is  after  all  less  vital  than  character.  We  really 
prefer  organization  to  coruscation.  And  so  in 
music  we  are  capable  of  learning,  and  knowl- 
edge of  the  principles  of  musical  effect  can 
help  us  to  learn,  that  the  balance  and  propor- 
tion and  symmetry  of  the  whole  is  far  more 
essential  than  any  poignancy,  however  great,  in 
the  parts.  He  best  appreciates  music  who 
brings  to  it  all  of  his  human  powers,  who  un- 
derstands it  intellectually  as  well  as  feels  it 
emotionally. 

In  these  and  other  ways  the  principles  of 
musical  effect  afford  touchstones  for  the  detec- 
tion of  prevalent  but  erroneous  views — views 
which  contain  their  element  of  truth,  but  are 
still  fallacious  because  partial.  But  the  same 
principles  are  also  capable  of  yielding  more 
positive  and  detailed  insight  into  the  nature  of 
musical  appreciation.  They  illuminate,  for  ex- 
ample, that  perplexing  problem  of  expression — 
why  it  is  that  from  the  same  piece  of  music  one 
person  gets  so  much  more  than  another.     The 

35 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

fact  is  familiar  to  every  one.  Every  one  knows 
that  of  two  persons  equally  sensitive  to  music 
on  the  sensuous  and  formal  side,  of  good  "  ear," 
and  familiar  with  the  effects  of  harmony,  mel- 
ody and  rhythm,  one  will  get  far  deeper  mean- 
ings, will  be  far  more  elated  and  inspired,  than 
the  other.  How  can  this  be  ?  Our  theory  of 
expression  gives  the  clew.  We  have  seen  that 
bodily  states  set  up  by  imitation  are  the  basis 
of  musical  emotions.  Hearing  is  always  a  sort 
of  ideal  performing.  In  listening  to  a  melody 
we  always  feebly  contract  our  throat  muscles  as 
if  to  sing,  and  the  perception  of  rhythm  is 
always  accompanied  by  an  incipient  "  iceeping 
time."  These  bodily  acts,  however  faintly 
realized,  set  up  their  appropriate  feelings,  the 
feelings  we  associate  with  their  actual  perform- 
ance. But  now  it  should  be  noted  that  the 
richness,  quality,  and  significance  of  these  feel- 
ings will  depend  in  the  case  of  each  man  on  his 
particular  associations — that  is  to  say,  on  his 
entire  personal  character.  Evoked  by  similar 
bodily  states,  the  mental  emotions  will  be  al- 
ways as  dissimilar  as  the  men  who  feel  them. 
"  We  cannot  conceive,"  says  Thoreau,  "  of  a 
greater  difference  than  that  between  the  life  of 

36 


APPRECIATION       OF       MUSIC 

one  man  and  that  of  another."  He  might 
truly  have  added  that  we  cannot  conceive  of  a 
greater  difference  than  that  between  the  feelings 
of  one  man  and  those  of  another  in  hearing 
the  same  piece  of  music,  which  excites  in  both 
the  same  tremors  and  thrills,  but  vistas  of 
thought  how  utterly  unlike !  Musical  appre- 
ciation is  thus  subject  to  the  same  variations 
which  make  the  ordinary  experiences  of  men 
so  diverse.  The  prophet  on  fire  with  righteous 
indignation  and  the  common  scold  undergo  in 
anger  the  same  suffusion  of  blood,  the  same 
boiling  up  of  the  organs  ;  yet  how  different  in 
dignity  and  value  are  their  sentiments  !  And 
music,  by  setting  up  a  certain  sympathetic  tur- 
moil in  the  organs,  will  plunge  one  man  into  a 
selfish  opium-dream  and  will  fill  another  with 
the  rarest,  most  magnanimous  aspirations.  It 
follows  as  a  practical  corollary  that  he  who 
would  get  from  music  the  best  it  has  to  offer 
must  cultivate  the  best  in  himself  No  fine 
sensibility  in  him,  no  large  heroism,  no  gen- 
erosity or  dignity  or  profundity  of  character 
will  be  without  its  quiet,  far-reaching  effect  on 
his  appreciation  of  music. 

If  expression  depends  thus  in  part  upon  the 

37 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

moral  and  temperamental  qualities  of  the  lis- 
tener, form  in  equal  measure  depends  upon  his 
mental  alertness.  "  Form,"  says  Dr.  Santa- 
yana,  "  does  not  appeal  to  the  inattentive ;  they 
get  from  objects  only  a  vague  sensation  which 
may  in  them  awaken  extrinsic  associations; 
they  do  not  stop  to  survey  the  parts  or  to  ap- 
preciate their  relation,  and  consequently  are  in- 
sensible to  the  various  charms  of  various  unifi- 
cations ;  they  can  find  in  objects  only  the  value 
of  material  or  of  function,  not  that  of  form." 
This  is  unfortunately  the  case  with  many  who 
consider  themselves  "  musical  ";  they  enjoy 
sweetness  of  sound  and  the  rather  vague  emo- 
tion music  arouses  in  them,  but  get  no  clear 
sense  of  its  deeper  architectural  beauty.  Like 
Charles  Lamb,  they  are  "  sentimentally  disposed 
to  harmony,  but  organically  incapable  of  a 
tune."  But  a  thoroughgoing  love  of  music,  as 
will  be  clear  enough  by  now,  must  include  an 
appreciation  of  all  its  aspects  ;  and  since  beauty 
of  form  is  not  only  delightful  in  itself,  but  is  a 
potent  means  of  expression  as  well,  insensibility 
to  it  involves  the  loss  of  much  of  what  is  most 
precious  in  music.  It  is  necessary,  then,  to  train 
the  attention,  to  listen  accurately  as  well  as  sym- 

38 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

pathetically,  to  grasp  the  thematic  phrases  as 
they  occur,  to  remember  them  when  they  recur, 
and  to  follow  them  through  all  their  transfor- 
mations. We  should  think  that  man  but 
slightly  appreciative  of  poetry  who,  after  hear- 
ing a  play  of  Shakespeare,  should  say  that  the 
words  seemed  to  him  mellifluous  and  that  many 
passages  moved  him,  but  that  he  had  not  the 
slightest  idea  what  it  was  all  about.  Yet  how 
many  of  us,  after  hearing  a  Beethoven  symphony, 
have  the  slightest  definite  idea  what  it  is  about? 
If  we  would  get  more  than  transient,  profitless 
titillation  from  music,  we  must  cultivate  our  at- 
tention, learning,  to  borrow  a  phrase  from  optics, 
"to  make  the  image  sharp."  As  we  progress  in 
that  faculty  we  shall  constantly  see  new  beauties, 
which  in  turn  will  constantly  react  to  deepen  ex- 
pression; and  if  we  are  so  fortunate  as  to  have  al- 
so a  nature  sensitive,  tender,  and  earnest,  fitted  to 
feel  the  best  kind  of  emotion  that  can  be  aroused 
by  sound,  we  may  hope  to  gain  eventually  an  ac- 
curate, intelligent,  and  deep  appreciation  of  music. 

V 

It   remains,  now    that  we  have  traced  the 
bearing  of  our   general  principles  on  musical 

39 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

taste,  to  point  out  briefly  how  they  afford  also 
criteria  for  judging  composers  themselves,  and 
how,  thus  judged,  the  six  composers  we  are  to 
study  fall  into  perspective.  Our  principles,  in  a 
word,  will  now  enable  us  to  supplement  our  later 
studies  of  these  composers  in  isolation  with  a 
somewhat  rough  but  still  helpful  sense  of  their 
interrelationship.  We  must  relate  them  to  the 
general  evolution  of  which  they  are  phases ;  see 
how  they  differ  in  the  power  to  assimilate  the 
work  of  their  predecessors,  to  avail  themselves 
of  all  the  resources,  expressive  and  formal,  of 
their  art,  and  to  develop  new  resources  for  those 
who  succeed  them.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
insist  on  the  value  of  some  such  basis  of  com- 
parison. Without  it  we  should  be  like  a  cer- 
tain member  of  a  college  geology  class  who, 
more  ardent  than  methodical,  was  wont  to  in- 
vestigate outcrops  and  moraines  with  great  en- 
thusiasm, but  in  utter  ignorance  of  the  points  of 
the  compass.  To  this  scatter-brained  young 
man  the  instructor  used  always  to  say,  "  Orient 
yourself  first  of  all,  Mr.  Jones,  orient  your- 
self." And  so,  before  examining  the  individual 
outcroppings  of  modern  music,  we  shall  do  well 
to  orient  ourselves  in  the  artistic  landscape. 

4« 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

Of  all  the  composers  with  whom  we  are  to 
deal,  Grieg  and  Dvorak  are  the  least  inclusive 
and  catholic.  Grieg,  as  we  shall  see,  writes  al- 
ways in  the  personal  vein,  is  among  musicians 
what  Leigh  Hunt  and  Charles  Lamb  are  among 
writers.  He  is  intimate,  charming,  graceful, 
but  never  epic  or  universal.  He  touches  the 
great  stream  of  musical  tradition  at  a  few  points 
only,  and  adds  little  to  its  volume.  He  knows 
how  to  combine  a  few  elements  of  effect  with 
finesse,  but  there  are  limitations  both  in  what 
he  has  to  say  and  in  his  means  of  saying  it. 
He  is  familiar  with  only  one  dialect  in  the 
language  of  tones.  And  if  Grieg  is  personal, 
Dvorak  is  at  most  national.  He  is  too  deep- 
dyed  a  Bohemian  to  be  a  complete  citizen 
of  the  world.  Not  only  is  his  style  curiously 
provincial,  with  its  uneven  rhythms  of  folk- 
song, its  strong  dance-like  metrical  schemes, 
and  its  florid  coloring,  but  his  substance  is  too 
ornate  and  too  sweet  to  be  profoundly  sig- 
nificant. He  is  a  "natural "  musician  raised  to 
the  n'**  power,  but  he  is  not  enough  a  scholar 
to  relate  himself  very  vitally  with  the  general 
growth  of  his  art.  Both  of  these  men  have 
contributed  much  that  is  novel  and  charming 

41 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

to  the  lighter  side  of  music,  but  they  are  not 
masters  of  deep  feehng  and  wide  scope. 

Camille  Saint-Saens  and  Cesar  Franck  illus- 
trate strikingly  another  sort  of  partiality,  a  par- 
tiality often  met  with  in  a  less  noticeable  degree. 
Each  exemplifies  only  one  of  those  contrasting 
phases  of  feeling  which  we  saw  to  underlie 
Dance  and  Song,  and  which  in  the  greatest 
composers  are  combined.  Saint-Saens'  work, 
primarily  expressive  of  active  feeling,  is  strongly 
metrical,  derives  its  chief  interest  and  value 
from  rhythmic  qualities ;  Franck's,  the  pro- 
duct of  a  singularly  contemplative  and  monastic 
nature,  is  monotonous  in  rhythm,  but  endlessly 
various  in  melodic  and  harmonic  treatment.  In 
the  biographical  essays  the  antithesis  will  be 
brought  out  more  in  detail.  Here  it  is  only 
necessary  to  suggest  that,  if  these  two  French 
composers  are  somewhat  wider  in  scope  than 
Grieg  or  Dvorak,  their  curious  limitations  in 
temperament  prevent  them  from  doing  all-inclu- 
sive and  universal  work. 

With  Tschaikowsky  and  Brahms  we  come 
to  men  of  a  larger  caliber.  These  two,  different 
as  they  are — the  Russian  finding  in  music  pri- 
marily   a   means    of  expression,  the    German 

4* 


APPRECIATION      OF      MUSIC 

valuing  more  its  plastic  beauty — are,  neverthe- 
less, the  only  two  moderns  who  can  be  said  to 
carry  on  worthily  the  torch  of  Bach  and  Bee- 
thoven. Both  were  men  of  sufficiently  wide 
sympathy  and  scholarship  to  approach  music 
with  the  utmost  liberality,  to  get  into  contact 
with  all  its  traditions  and  utilize  all  its  technical 
resources.  They  write  in  that  "  grand  style  '* 
which  draws  its  elements  from  the  widest 
sources,  the  style  not  of  one  man  nor  of  one 
nation,  but  of  the  world.  Again,  they  were 
men  of  complex  temperament,  capable  of  a 
great  range  of  feeling  both  active  and  contem- 
plative. Consequently  the  dance  impulse  and 
the  song  impulse  are  equally  operative  in  their 
work,  which  has  a  richness  and  variety  to  be 
found  in  Bach  and  Beethoven,  but  not  in  Saint- 
Saens  or  Franclc.  And  though  they  were  men 
of  the  deepest  emotion,  they  had  also  the  intel- 
lectual control  over  their  work  that  made  it  not 
only  expressive  but  beautiful.  In  a  word,  the 
range  of  their  learning,  the  manysidedness  of 
their  temperaments,  their  emotional  profundity 
and  their  intellectual  power,  all  conspired  to 
make  them  the  greatest  musicians  of  their 
time. 

43 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

Yet  even  between  these  two  great  men  it  is 
possible,  with  the  aid  of  our  principles,  to  make 
a  distinction.  We  have  seen  that  form  is  not 
only  a  means  of  defining  utterance,  but  that  it 
is  furthermore  the  source  of  aesthetic  delight, 
and,  through  the  reverberation  of  that,  of  an 
immense  reinforcement  to  expression  ;  and  we 
have  accordingly  concluded  that  in  no  case 
must  form  be  sacrificed  to  any  other  factor  of 
effect  whatsoever.  To  sacrifice  form,  in  music, 
whatever  may  seem  at  first  sight  the  justifica- 
tion, is  in  the  long  run  to  sacrifice  the  greater 
for  the  less.  Now  Tschaikowsky,  led  away  by 
the  impetuosity  of  his  feeling,  is  often  guilty  of 
such  a  sacrifice.  He  gains  for  the  moment ; 
he  gains  a  compelling  eloquence,  the  most  ex- 
citing effects,  the  wildest  and  most  thrilling 
crises.  But  in  the  long  run  he  loses.  Eventu- 
ally one  tires  of  the  crises,  one  is  left  cold,  and 
then  the  waywardness,  the  incoherence,  the 
lack  of  clear  order  and  symmetry,  are  felt  as 
weaknesses.  Too  many  of  Tschaikowsky's 
pieces  are  better  at  a  first  hearing  than  at  a 
fifth.  With  Brahms  it  is  otherwise.  All  his 
emotion,  deep,  tender  and  noble  as  it  is,  is  con- 
trolled by  the  firm  will  and  the  shaping  hand  of 

44 


APPRECIATION       OF       MUSIC 

the  supreme  artist.  However  moving  his 
music  may  be,  it  is  even  more  beautiful.  His 
faculties,  whether  by  good  fortune  or  merit,  are 
more  perfectly  adjusted  than  those  of  any  other 
modern  composer.  He  is  the  most  profound, 
the  most  simple,  the  most  comprehensive  of 
moderns,  as  becomes  obvious  when  we  test  his 
work  by  the  principles  we  have  laid  down. 
Others  exemplify  them  partially,  he  most  en- 
tirely; others  are  great  in  some  or  several  effects, 
he  is  roundedly  great.  He  allies  himself  with 
all  that  was  done  in  music  before  him,  and  con- 
tributes indispensable  elements  to  what  will  be 
done  in  it  hereafter.  And  so,  if  we  arrange  our 
six  composers  in  a  series,  determining  the  im- 
portance of  each  by  means  of  the  universal  and 
impersonal  principles  of  art,  we  must  pass  from 
Grieg  to  Brahms. 


II 

EDVARD    GRIEG 


EDVARD    GRIEG 


II 

EDVARD    GRIEG 


O  the  musical  amateur  no  contem- 
porary composer  is  better  known 
than  Grieg.  Every  school-girl 
plays  his  piano  pieces,  young 
violinists  study  his  delightfully 
melodious  sonatas,  and  few  concert  pieces  are 
more  widely  loved  than  the  Peer  Gynt  Suite. 
Yet  from  professional  musicians  Grieg  does  not 
meet  with  such  favor.  Many  speak  of  him 
patronizingly,  some  scornfully.  "  Grieg  ?  "  they 
say.  "  Oh,  yes,  very  charming,  but — "  and  the 
sentence  ends  with  a  shrug.  The  reason  for  this 
discrepancy  of  estimate  seems  to  be  that  the  lay- 
man, fascinated  by  Grieg's  lovely  melodies,  un- 
usual and  piquant  harmonic  treatment,  and  con- 
tagious rhythm,  looks  for  no  further  quality ; 
but   the   musician,  unconsciously  referring  all 

49 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

music  to  a  standard  based  on  works  of  greater 
solidity,  greater  breadth  and  force  and  passion 
as  well  as  wider  learning  and  superior  skill,  is 
too  conscious  of  the  shortcomings  of  this  Nor- 
wegian minstrelsy  to  do  justice  to  its  qualities. 
It  is,  of  a  truth,  music  in  which  merit  and  failing 
are  curiously  mingled  ;  its  delicate  beauty  is 
unique,  its  limitation  extreme.  It  is  as  fair  as  a 
flower,  and  as  fragile.  It  is,  in  short,  the  efflu- 
ence of  a  personality  graceful  without  strength, 
romantic  without  the  sense  of  tragedy,  highly 
gifted  with  all  gentle  qualities  of  nature,  but 
lacking  in  the  more  virile  powers,  in  broad  vis- 
ion, epic  magnanimity,  and  massive  force. 

Of  this  personality,  as  it  appears  in  the  flesh, 
we  get  an  interesting  glimpse  in  Tschaikowsky's 
Diary.*  "During  the  rehearsal  of  Brahms's 
new  trio,"  writes  Tschaikowsky,  **as  I  was  tak- 
ing the  liberty  of  making  some  remarks  as  to  the 
skill  and  execution  of  the  relative  tempo  2-3 — 
remarks  which  were  very  good-naturedly  re- 
ceived by  the  composer — there  entered  the  room 
a   very   short,  middle-aged    man,    exceedingly 

*  ««Diary  of  My  Tour  in  1888,"  translated  in  "Tschai- 
kowsky, His  Life  and  Works,"  by  Rosa  Newmarch.  (John 
Lane,  New  York,  1900.) 

SO 


EDVARD        GRIEG 


fragile  in  appearance,  with  shoulders  of  unequal 
height,  fair  hair  brushed  back  from  his  forehead, 
and  a  very  slight,  almost  boyish  beard  and 
mustache.  There  was  nothing  very  striking 
about  the  features  of  this  man,  whose  exterior 
at  once  attracted  my  sympathy,  for  it  would  be 
impossible  to  call  them  handsome  or  regular  ; 
but  he  had  an  uncommon  charm,  and  blue  eyes, 
not  very  large,  but  irresistibly  fascinating,  recall- 
ing the  glance  of  a  charming  and  candid  child. 
I  rejoiced  in  the  depths  of  my  heart  when  we 
were  introduced  to  each  other,  and  it  turned  out 
that  this  personality  which  was  so  inexplicably 
sympathetic  to  me  belonged  to  a  musician  whose 
warmly  emotional  music  had  long  ago  won 
my  heart.  He  proved  to  be  the  Norwegian 
composer,  Edvard  Grieg."  This  was  in  1888, 
when  Grieg  was  forty-five.  We  may  compare 
with  it  another  description,  made  a  year  later 
by  a  Frenchman,  M.  Ernest  Closson,  when 
Grieg  was  playing  and  conducting  his  works  in 
Paris.  "  Grieg  is  small,  thin,  and  narrow- 
shouldered,"  writes  M.  Closson.*  "  His  body, 
which  is  like  a  child's,  is  always  in  motion — the 

♦  **  Eklvard  Grieg  et  la  Musique  Scandinave,"  Ernest  Closson. 
Paris,  Librairie  Fischbacher,  1892. 

5" 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

movements  short,  lively,  singularly  jerky  and 
angular,  each  step  shaking  the  whole  body  and 
hitching  the  shoulder  as  if  he  limped ;  a  *  bun- 
dle of  nerves  '  ![" paquet  des  nerfs  "],  to  use  a 
doctor's  phrase  of  picturesque  energy.  The 
head,  which  looks  massive  on  so  small  a  body, 
is  intelligent  and  very  handsome,  with  long 
grayish  hair  thrown  back,  thin  face,  smooth- 
shaven  chin,  short,  thick  mustache,  small  but 
full  nose,  and  eyes  ! — eyes  superb,  green,  gray, 
in  which  one  can  fancy  one  catches  a  glimpse  of 
Norway,  with  its  melancholy  fjords  and  its  lu- 
minous mists.  His  gaze  is  serious,  wonderfully 
soft,  with  a  peculiar  expression,  at  once  worn, 
tentative,  and  childishly  naive.  The  entire  ef- 
fect is  of  kindness,  gentleness,  candor,  a  sincere 
modesty." 

It  is  thus  obvious  that  Grieg  is  of  the  ner- 
vous, sensitive  temperament,  the  temperament 
of  Keats  and  Stevenson,  quick  and  ardent  in 
feeling,  and  in  art  notable  for  subjective,  in- 
timate work  rather  than  for  the  wide  objective 
point  of  view.  Grieg's  music  is  of  value,  in- 
deed, just  because  it  is  the  artistic  expression  of 
delicate  personal  feeling.  We  shall  find  that 
his  whole  development  tended  toward  a  singu- 

5* 


EDVARD        GRIEG 


larly  individual,  or  at  most  national,  utterance  ; 
that  his  efforts  toward  a  complexer  or  more 
universal  style,  such  as  in  poetry  we  call  epic, 
were  unsuccessful ;  and  that  his  real  and  inimi- 
table achievement  is  all  in  the  domain  of  the 
pure  lyric. 

Edvard  Grieg  was  born  in  Bergen,  Norway, 
in  1843.  -^^  ^^  early  age  he  showed  musical 
talent,  starting  in  to  learn  the  piano  and  theory 
at  six,  under  his  mother's  direction.  Gesine 
Grieg,  born  Hagerup,  descendent  from  a  force- 
ful Norwegian  family  which  had  produced 
some  famous  men,  was  a  woman  of  musical  and 
poetic  instinct  and  of  strong  character.  She 
had  studied  music  in  Hamburg  and  in  London, 
and  given  some  concerts  and  many  soirees  in 
Bergen.  In  a  word,  her  son  could  not  have 
found  a  better  guide  in  his  first  studies.  At 
nine  Grieg  surprised  his  school-teacher  by  sub- 
mitting in  place  of  a  literary  composition  a  set 
of  original  variations  on  a  German  melody,  a 
substitution  which  was  not  kindly  received. 
He  was  told  to  stop  such  nonsense.  The 
artistic  temperament  revealed  itself  also  in  great 
sensitiveness  to  the  beauty  of  the  somber 
Northern  landscape,  and  at  fifteen  Grieg  wished 

S3 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

to  become  a  painter.  Fortunately,  however, 
his  musical  ability  was  recognized  by  the  fam- 
ous violinist  Ole  Bull,  at  whose  suggestion  his 
parents  decided  to  send  him  to  the  Leipsic 
Conservatory,  whither  he  traveled  in  1858. 
Here  again  the  romanticism  of  the  boy  showed 
itself  in  his  fretfulness  under  the  strict  regime  of 
his  masters,  Hauptmann,  Richter,  Rietz,  Rei- 
necke,  and  Moscheles^  and  in  his  passionate 
devotion  to  the  works  of  Schumann  and  Chopin, 
who  were  then  looked  upon  in  academic  circles 
as  somewhat  dangerous  revolutionaries.  Ex- 
cept for  a  vacation  of  some  months  at  home, 
necessitated  by  the  pulmonary  trouble  which 
has  ever  since  weakened  Grieg's  health,  he 
spent  four  years  in  the  Conservatory,  being 
graduated  in  1862. 

In  his  earliest  compositions,  produced  at  this 
period,  the  traits  that  afterwards  distinguished 
him  are  rather  hampered  by  academic  influ- 
ences and  uncertainty  of  intention.  The  four 
Pieces,  opus  i,  by  no  means  devoid  of  his  pecul- 
iar flavor,  are  yet  tentative  in  style  and  remin- 
iscent of  older  masters,  particularly  Chopin 
and  Mendelssohn.  Of  the  Poetic  Tone-pic- 
tures, opus  3,  the  second  and  fourth  are  the 

54 


EDVARD       GRIEG 


well-established  type  of  graceful  salon  piece. 
Number  four,  indeed,  might  almost  be  a  strayed 
leaf  from  that  gentle  but  hackneyed  work 
which  some  modern  cynic  has  called  the 
"  Songs  without  Music."  Yet  the  very  next 
piece  is  full-fledged  Grieg.  Here  is  the  short 
four-measure  phrase,  transposed  a  third  and  re- 
peated, here  the  descending  chromatic  harmon- 
izations, here  the  raucous  fifths  as  of  peasant 
players,  that  we  shall  presently  learn  to  look 
for  among  the  hall-marks  of  his  writings.  But 
more  important  than  any  such  technical  details  is 
the  general  animation,  producing  trenchant 
rhythm,  graceful  melody,  and  warm  harmony, 
that  always  sparkles  in  Grieg's  best  work.  In 
the  Poetic  Tone-pictures  he  is  already  himself, 
though  not  his  mature  self. 

Being  at  graduation  somewhat  bewildered 
and  uncertain  as  to  his  future  course,  Grieg 
turned  his  steps  in  1863  to  the  Danish  capital, 
the  home  of  a  great  man  whom  he  idolized. 
"  One  day,"  he  writes  in  an  autobiographical 
fragment,  "  I  had  gone  out  with  my  friend 
Matthison-Hansen  to  Klampenborg.  Sudden- 
ly he  nudged  my  arm. 

«  *  What  is  it  ? '  I  said. 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

"  *  Do  you  see  that  little  man  with  the  large 
gray  hat  ?  * 

"  *  I  see  him.* 

"  *  Do  you  know  who  it  is  ?  *  said  he. 

"  *  I  haven't  the  least  idea.' 

"  *  That's  Gade,'  he  said.  *  Shall  I  introduce 
you  ?' 

"  And  without  waiting  for  my  reply  he  took 
me  up  to  the  Professor,  with  the  curt  an- 
nouncement : 

"  *  Professor,  a  Norwegian  friend  of  mine — 
a  good  musician.' 

"  *  Is  it  Nordraak  ? '  asked  Gade. 

"  *  No,  it  is  Grieg,'  answered  Matthison- 
Hansen. 

"  *  Oh,  that's  who  it  is,*  said  Gade,  scanning 
my  insignificant  and  humble  self  from  head  to 
foot  with  a  searching  glance,  while  I  stood,  not 
without  awe,  face  to  face  with  the  man  whose 
works  I  treasured  so  highly.  *  Have  you  some- 
thing to  show  me  ? ' 

"  *  No,'  I  answered.  For  the  things  I  had 
finished  didn't  seem  good  enough. 

"  *  Then  go  home  and  write  a  symphony,* 
recommended  Gade." 

It    is    indicative    of   the    groping   stage   at 

56 


EDVARD        GRIEG 


which  Grieg's  genius  still  paused  that  he  actu- 
ally tried  to  write  a  symphony,  two  movements 
of  which  are  preserved  in  the  Symphonic  Pieces, 
opus  14 — Grieg,  whose  talent  was  symphonic 
in  about  the  degree  that  Brahms's  was  operatic. 
Contact  with  the  friendly  little  man  in  the  large 
gray  hat,  who  has  been  dubbed  the  "  Danish 
Mendelssohn,"  was  doubtless  a  stimulus  to  the 
young  Grieg ;  but  other  and  more  radical  influ- 
ences were  needed  to  awaken  his  personality 
and  bring  him  to  his  own.  Such  influences, 
however,  he  actually  found  in  Copenhagen. 
The  "  Nordraak  "  for  whom  Gade  had  at  first 
taken  him,  a  fervently  patriotic  Norwegian  o( 
magnetic  personality,  acquainted  him  with 
Norwegian  folk-songs  and  fired  him  with  an 
ambition  to  found  on  them  a  finished  art. 
Meeting  in  solemn  conclave,  with  all  the  self- 
importance  of  youth,  these  two  enthusiasts 
took  the  oath  of  musical  allegiance  to  their 
fatherland.  "  It  was  as  though  scales  fell  from 
my  eyes,"  writes  Grieg ;  "  for  the  first  time  I 
learned  ...  to  understand  my  own  nature. 
We  abjured  the  Gade  -  Mendelssohn  insipid 
and  diluted  Scandinavianism,  and  bound  our- 
selves with  enthusiasm  to  the  new  path  which 

57 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

the  northern  school  is  now  following."  Nor 
did  their  zeal  confine  itself  to  composition. 
In  1864  they  founded,  with  their  Danish  friends 
Horneman  and  Matthison-Hansen,  the  Euterpe 
Musical  Society,  for  the  performance  of  Scan- 
dinavian works.  This  institution,  which  must 
have  reacted  stimulatingly  on  their  composi- 
tion, they  supported  energetically  up  to  Grieg's 
departure  in  1866  for  Christiania.  Finally,  it 
was  in  these  years  of  his  freshest  vigor,  in  which 
he  was  conscious  both  of  inner  power  and  of 
outer  opportunities,  that  Grieg  met  the  lady. 
Miss  Nina  Hagerup,  his  cousin,  who  became  in 
time  his  wife.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
no  period  in  his  life  was  so  fruitful  as  this. 

His  most  characteristic  works,  accordingly, 
were  composed  between  his  graduation  from  the 
conservatory  and  the  early  seventies — between 
his  twentieth  and  his  thirtieth  years.  There  are 
the  two  inimitable  Sonatas  for  Violin  and  Piano, 
opus  8  and  13;  the  Piano  Sonata,  opus  7;  the 
incidental  music  to  Ibsen's  Peer  Gynt;  some  of 
the  most  charming  of  the  Lyric  Pieces  for  piano 
and  of  the  Songs,  and  the  Piano  Concerto,  opus 
16  ;  the  best  part,  certainly,  of  his  entire  musi- 
cal product.      It  were  a  hopeless  as  well  as  use- 

S8 


EDVARD       GRIEG 

less  task  to  describe  in  words  the  qualities  of 
these  compositions.  What  shall  one  say  in 
words  of  the  flavor  of  an  orange  ?  It  is  sweet  ? 
Yes.  And  acid  ?  Yes,  a  little.  And  it  has  a 
delicate  aroma,  and  is  juicy  and  cool.  But  how 
much  idea  of  an  orange  has  one  conveyed  then  ? 
And  similarly  with  this  indescribably  delicate 
music  of  Grieg  ;  there  is  little  that  can  be  perti- 
nently or  serviceably  said  of  it.  One  may  point 
out,  however,  its  persistently  lyrical  character.  It 
is  like  the  poetry  of  Mr.  Henley  in  its  exclusive 
concern  with  moods,  with  personal  emotions  of 
the  subtlest,  most  elusive  sort.  It  is  intimate, 
suggestive,  intangible.  It  voices  the  gentlest 
feelings  of  the  heart,  or  summons  up  the  airiest 
visions  of  the  imagination.  It  is  whimsical,  too, 
changes  its  hues  like  the  chameleon,  and  often 
surprises  us  with  a  sudden  flight  to  some  unex- 
pected shade  of  expression.  Again,  its  finesse 
is  striking.  The  phrases  are  polished  like  gems, 
the  melodies  charm  us  with  their  perfect  pro- 
portions, the  cadences  are  as  consummate  as 
they  are  novel.  Then,  again,  the  rhythm  is 
most  delightfully  frank  and  straightforward  » 
there  is  no  maundering  or  uncertainty,but  always 
a  vigorous  dancing  progress,  as  candid  as  child- 

59 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

hood.  It  is  hard  to  keep  one's  feet  still  through 
some  of  the  Norwegian  Dances.  And  though 
in  the  Lyric  Pieces  rhythm  is  ideahzed,  it  is  al- 
ways definite  and  clear,  so  that  they  are  at  the 
opposite  pole  from  all  that  formless  sentimen- 
tality which  abandons  accent  in  order  to  wail. 
Again,  we  must  notice  the  curious  exotic  flavor 
of  this  music,  a  flavor  not  Oriental  but  north- 
ern, a  half-wild,  half-tender  pathos,  outlandish 
a  little,  but  not  turgid — on  the  contrary,  per- 
fectly pellucid.  An  example  is  a  little  waltz 
that  figures  as  number  two  of  the  Lyric  Pieces, 
opus  1 2.  Grieg's  music,  then,  is  lyrical,  intimate, 
shapely,  and  exotic,  if  such  words  mean  any- 
thing— yes,  just  as  the  orange  is  sweet,  acid,  and 
aromatic.  One  who  would  feel  the  quality  of 
these  works  must  hear  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  Grieg  is  never  large  or 
heroic ;  he  never  wears  the  buskin.  He  has 
neither  the  depth  of  passion  nor  the  intellectual 
grasp  needed  to  make  music  in  the  grand  style. 
Probably  of  all  his  peculiarities  the  most  sig- 
nificant is  the  shortness  of  his  phrases  and  his 
manner  of  repeating  them  almost  literally,  dis- 
placed a  little  in  pitch,  but  not  otherwise  altered. 
Almost  all  his  music  can  be  cut  up  into  seg- 

60 


EDVARD        GRIEG 


ments  two  or  four  measures  long,  each  segment 
complete  in  itself,  an  entire  musical  thought 
If  the  reader  will  examine  the  little  Waltz  just 
mentioned,  for  example,  he  will  see  that  it  is 
constructed  as  follows:  after  two  introductory 
measures  a  phrase  of  melody  is  announced,  four 
measures  in  length ;  this  is  immediately  re- 
peated, at  the  same  pitch  but  slightly  varied  in 
rhythm  ;  then  enters  another  phrase,  two  meas- 
ures long,  which  is  repeated  literally  a  third 
lower ;  its  latter  half  is  twice  echoed,  and  there 
is  a  two-measure  cadence.  All  is  then  repeated. 
The  middle  part  of  the  piece,  in  A  major,  is 
built  in  much  the  same  way  ;  after  it  the  first 
part  is  given  once  more,  and  there  is  a  short 
coda.  The  construction  of  this  charming  piece, 
in  a  word,  is  very  like  that  of  the  passages  from 
primers  that  are  familiar  to  us  all :  "  Is  this 
a  boy?  This  is  a  boy.  Has  the  boy  a  dog? 
The  boy  has  a  dog.  This  is  the  dog  of  the 
boy."  And  Grieg's  coda  adds  meditatively, 
"  Of  the  boy  ....  the  boy  ....  boy." 
His  thoughts  complete  themselves  quickly;  they 
have  little  span,  and  they  are  combined,  not  by 
interfusion,  but  by  juxtaposition.  He  never 
weaves  a  tapestry ;  he  assembles  a  mosaic.     We 

6i 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

have  only  to  compare  his  music  with  that  oi 
some  great  master,  of  wide  scope  and  large 
synthetic  power,  like  Brahms  or  Beethoven,  to 
feel  precisely  in  what  sense  he  is  lyrical  rather 
than  heroic,  charming  rather  than  elevated,  sug- 
gestive rather  than  informative.  Compare,  for 
instance,  with  his  waltz,  the  waltz  of  Brahms, 
number  eight  in  opus  39.  Here  there  is  a  sus- 
tained flight  of  twelve  measures,  the  tune  pois- 
ing and  soaring  as  it  were  on  a  rising  or  falling 
breeze,  or  like  a  kite  that  now  dips  and  now  is 
up  again,  but  never  touches  the  earth.  It  is 
interesting  to  play  the  two  waltzes  one  after  the 
other,  noting  the  difference  in  effect  between 
the  precise,  dainty,  clipped  phrases  of  the  one 
and  the  broad-spanned  arch  of  meloc  /  of  the 
other.  Such  contrasts  are  at  the  basis  of  all 
significant  discriminations  of  musical  form. 

How  much  the  "short  breath  "  of  Grieg  is 
due  to  the  nature  of  his  thematic  material  is  a 
difficult  question  to  answer.  Folk-tunes,  it  is 
certain,  are  simple  in  structure,  composed  of 
short  phrases  expressing  the  naive  emotions  of 
childlike  minds.  On  the  other  hand,  had  they 
not  fulfilled  Grieg's  personal  needs,  supplying 
the  sort  of  atmosphere  he  was  meant  to  breathe 

62 


EDVARD       GRIEG 


in,  he  could  never  have  assimilated  them  as  he 
has  done.  Perhaps  a  true  account  of  the  mat- 
ter is  that  his  nature  is  of  such  unusual  sim- 
plicity and  ingenuousness  as  to  find  in  folk- 
melodies  its  natural  utterance,  and  to  feel  in 
their  primitive  phrase-structure  no  limitation. 
Intellectually,  the  man  is  not  more  mature 
than  the  people.  From  whatever  sources  he 
might  draw  his  germinal  ideas,  he  would  never 
combine  them  in  complexer  forms  or  larger  pat- 
terns than  he  has  found  ready-made  to  his 
hand  in  the  national  song.  There  are,  however, 
in  Norwegian  music  peculiarities  of  a  different 
sort  that  we  can  hardly  conceive  as  proving 
other  than  hindrances  in  the  formation  of  a 
wholesomely  eclectic  style  —  peculiarities  which 
are  all  present  full-fledged  in  so  early  a  work 
of  Grieg  as  the  Piano  Concerto,  opus  1 6,  written 
in  1868.  At  the  very  outset,  in  the  descend- 
ing octave  passage,  there  are  two  melodic  tricks 
that  recur  everywhere  in  Grieg — the  fall  from 
the  seventh  of  the  scale  to  the  fifth,  and  from 
the  third  to  the  tonic.  Both  progressions,  anom- 
alous in  classic  music,  are  prominent  features 
of  the  Northern  folk-tunes.  Then,  in  the  first 
theme,  assigned  to  the  orchestra,  there  are  to 

•3 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

be  noticed,  besides  these  melodic  steps,  the 
bodily  displacement  of  the  phrase  already  de- 
scribed, carrying  it  from  A  minor  into  C  major. 
In  the  second  theme,  as  well  as  in  the  cantabile 
piano  passage  that  prepares  the  way  for  it,  there 
is  a  rhythmic  device  characteristic  of  Grieg — 
the  mixing  in  one  measure  of  three  notes  to  the 
beat  with  two  notes  to  the  beat,  of  which  the 
prototype  is  to  be  found  in  the  "  Springtanz  " 
of  Norwegian  peasants.  Here  also  is  the  weak 
cadence,  that  is  to  say,  the  cadence  with  tonic 
chord  coming  on  an  unaccented  beat.  So 
much  for  melodic  and  rhythmic  peculiarities ; 
as  a  harmonist  Grieg  has  methods  equally  per- 
sistent. His  love  of  bare  fifths,  reiterated  in 
the  bass  with  boorish  vigor,  and  his  manner  of 
harmonizing  with  descending  chromatic  sixths 
or  thirds,  both  of  which  we  remarked  in  opus  3, 
are  illustrated  in  this  Concerto ;  the  first  in  the 
conclusion-theme  of  the  first  movement,  and 
the  second  in  measures  fourteen  to  sixteen  of 
the  beautiful  Adagio.  Finally,  he  is  devoted 
to  the  secondary  sevenths,  especially  in  harsh 
and  daring  sequence  such  as  make  up  most  of 
the  Norwegian  March,  opus  54,  No.  1.  Man- 
nerisms like  these  Grieg  has,  on  the  whole,  in 

64 


EDVARD       GRIEG 


far  larger  measure  than  most  composers.  On 
almost  any  of  his  pages  the  student  will  have  no 
difficulty  in  finding  for  himself  instances  of  one 
or  more  of  these  mannerisms. 

Now,  so  many  little  tricks  and  idiosyncra- 
sies, however  piquant  in  the  work  of  a  begin- 
ner, could  hardly  escape  becoming,  as  time  went 
on,  an  incubus  to  even  the  most  vigorous  imag- 
ination. Nothing  menaces  thought  more  than 
affectations  and  whimsicalities  of  style.  And 
even  in  the  meridian  of  Grieg's  activity,  when 
he  was  charming  a  staid  world  with  the  fresh 
beauties  of  the  Piano  Sonata  and  the  two  early 
Violin  Sonatas,  there  were  not  wanting  critics 
who  discerned  his  danger  and  foresaw  that  he 
must  either  broaden  his  methods  or  deteriorate. 
Over  twenty  years  ago  the  following  words  were 
written  in  an  English  magazine  by  Frederick 
Niecks :  "  My  fear  in  the  case  of  Grieg  always 
was  that  his  love  of  Norwegian  idioms  would 
tend  to  narrow,  materialize,  and  make  shallow 
his  conceptions,  and  prevent  him  from  forming 
a  style  by  imposing  on  him  a  manner."  Sub- 
sequent events  have  proved  that  this  fear  was 
but  too  well  founded.  Although,  during  the 
years  at  Copenhagen,  and  the  eight  years,  from 

65 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

1866  to  1874,  that  Grieg  lived  in  Christiania 
teaching  and  conducting,  he  continued  to  do 
excellent  work,  he  seems  to  have  even  then 
reached  the  acme  of  his  powers,  and  thencefor- 
ward to  have  imperceptibly  declined.  It  is 
rather  a  melancholy  fact  that  when,  in  1874, 
receiving  a  pension  of  sixteen  hundred  crowns 
from  the  Government,  which  enabled  him  to  re- 
sign the  conductorship  of  the  Musical  Union 
of  Christiania,  he  began  to  devote  himself  al- 
most entirely  to  composition,  his  mental  vivac- 
ity was  waning  and  his  lovely  lyrical  utterance 
was  beginning  to  be  smothered  under  manner- 
isms. From  this  time  on  he  advanced  more  by 
familiarizing  the  world  with  his  earlier  compo- 
sitions than  by  adding  to  them  anything  partic- 
ularly novel  or  precious.  He  traveled  in  Ger- 
many, Holland  and  Denmark,  gave  concerts 
in  England  in  1888,  and  visited  France  a  year 
later,  playing  and  conducting  his  works  at  Paris. 
For  the  rest,  he  retired  to  his  picturesque  villa, 
Troldhangen,  ten  miles  from  Bergen,  where  he 
lives  a  peaceful  and  secluded  country  life. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  see  why  Grieg's  later 
works  should  decline  rather  than  advance.  In 
the  first  place,  his  interest  had  been  from  the 

66 


EDVARD       GRIEG 


first  concentrated  on  personal  expression.  His 
impulse  was  individual,  not  universal.  He 
never  sought  to  widen  or  deepen  the  forms  of 
musical  beauty,  to  extend  the  range  of  resources 
at  the  command  of  musicians  ;  he  merely  used 
what  he  found  ready-made  to  voice  his  own  po- 
etic feeling.  In  this  he  succeeded  admirably. 
In  the  second  place,  charmed  by  the  exotic 
quality  of  Norwegian  music,  a  quality  that  he 
found  also  in  his  own  nature,  he  adopted  the 
native  idiom  with  eagerness,  and  spent  the  years 
most  composers  devote  to  learning  the  musical 
language  in  acquiring — a  dialect.  Thirdly,  his 
mind  was  of  the  type  which  cares  much  for 
beauty  of  ornament — even  more,  perhaps,  than 
for  a  highly  wrought  harmony  of  line  and  form. 
It  was  the  inevitable  result  of  these  three  cir- 
cumstances that,  first,  he  should  reach  his  high- 
est activity  in  early  youth,  when  romantic  feel- 
ing is  at  its  acme  and  thought  habitually  sub- 
jective, and  thereafter  decline  ;  second,  that  the 
dialect  which  at  first  was  so  charming,  with  its 
unfamiliar  words  and  its  bewitching  accent, 
should  eventually  reveal  its  paucity  and  its  pro- 
vincialism ;  and  finally,  that  a  mind  naturally 
fond  of  rich  detail,  neglectful  of  large  shapeli- 
er 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

ness,  should  have  recourse,  in  the  ebb  of  inner 
impulse,  to  transcription,  paraphrase,  and  all 
the  other  devices  for  securing  superficial  orna- 
ment and  luxury  of  effect.  With  opus  41  Grieg 
began  transcribing  his  own  songs  for  the  piano, 
dressing  up  the  simple  melodies  in  all  sorts  of 
arpeggios,  curious  harmonies,  and  other  musi- 
cal decorations ;  and  between  his  fiftieth  and 
seventieth  opus-numbers  there  is  little  but  re- 
presentation of  Norwegian  tunes,  now  in  one 
guise  and  now  in  another,  but  seldom  indeed 
with  any  of  the  old  novel  charm.  (A  trace  of 
it  there  is,  perhaps,  in  opus  62,  No.  2,  and  again 
in  opus  80,  No.  4.)  The  extraordinary  pyro- 
technical  display  that  the  transcription,  opus  41, 
No.  5,  makes  out  of  so  simple  a  song  as  "  The 
Princess "  is  branded  by  M.  Closson  as  "  un 
crime  de  lese-art."  And  to  one  who  has  felt 
the  magic  of  the  Kuhreigen,  opus  17,  No.  22, 
it  is  saddening  to  turn  to  the  same  melody 
as  it  appears  in  opus  6^,  No.  2,  with  all  its 
maiden  grace  brushed  and  laced  and  furbelowed 
into  an  a  la  mode  elegance  and  vacuity.  Thus 
Grieg  has  not,  like  the  more  cosmopolitan,  ob- 
jective, and  universal  composers,  advanced  in 
his  work  up  to  the  very  end.     As  years  have 

68 


EDVARD       GRIEG 


progressed,  the  accidental  in  it,  the  inessential, 
has  become  more  prominent,  has  tended  to  ob- 
scure what  is  vital  and  beautiful.  As  the  spirit 
waned,  the  letter  has  become  more  rigidly  insist- 
ent. Idiosyncrasy  has  supplanted  originality. 
To  find  the  true  Grieg,  supple,  spontaneous, 
and  unaffected,  we  must  go  back  to  the  early 
works. 

When  all  is  said,  however,  Grieg  has  in  these 
early  works  made  a  contribution  to  music  which 
our  sense  of  his  later  shortcomings  must  not 
make  us  forget.  His  Piano  Sonata  and  his 
Violin  Sonatas  supply  chamber-music  with  a 
note  of  pure  lyric  enthusiasm,  of  fresh  unthink- 
ing animation,  not  elsewhere  to  be  found.  His 
Peer  Gynt  Suite  fills  a  similar  place  among 
orchestral  works.  His  best  piano  pieces,  and, 
above  all,  his  lovely  and  too  little  known  songs, 
are  unique  in  their  delicate  voicing  of  the  ten- 
derest,  most  elusive  personal  feeling,  as  well  as 
in  their  consummate  finesse  of  workmanship. 
It  is  a  Lilliputian  world,  if  you  will,  but  a  fair 
one.  That  art  of  the  future  which  Grieg  pre- 
dicts in  his  essay  on  Mozart,  which  "  will  unite 
lines  and  colors  in  marriage,  and  show  that  it 
has  its  roots  in  all  the  past,  that  it  draws  susten- 

69 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

ance  from  old  as  well  as  from  new  masters," 
will  acknowledge  in  Grieg  himself  the  source 
of  one  indispensable  element — the  element  of 
naive  and  spontaneous  romance. 

Bibliographical  Note. — Grieg  has  had  the  good  sense  to 
publish  almost  all  of  his  works  in  the  inexpensive  and  excellent 
Peters  Edition.  The  amateur  will  wish  to  acquaint  himself  first 
of  all  with  some  such  representative  pieces  as  the  following : 
Piano-pieces — Poetic  tone-pictures,  op.  3,  Humoreskes,  op.  6, 
Sonata,  op.  7,  Northern  Dances,  op.  17,  Albumblatter,  op.  28, 
and  the  Lyric  Pieces,  op.  12,  38,  43,  and  47  (op.  54,  57,  62, 
65,  and  68  are  inferior).  Four  hand  arrangements — Elegiac 
Melodies,  op.  34,  Norwegian  Dances,  op.  35,  and  the  first 
Peer  Gynt  Suite,  op.  40.  Chamber-music — ^the  three  Sonatas 
for  Violin  and  Piano  and  the 'Cello  Sonata,  op.  36.  Of  the 
songs,  sixty  are  printed  in  the  five  "Albums"  of  the  Peters 
Edition.  The  second  contains  half  a  dozen  of  Grieg's  most 
perfect  songs,  among  them  "I  Love  Thee,"  "  Morning 
Dew,"  "Parting"  and  "Wood  Wanderings."  "To  Spring- 
time "  in  Album  I,  "A  Swan"  and  "Solvejg's  Song"  in 
Album  III,  and  "By  the  Riverside,"  "The  Old  Mother," 
and  "  On  the  Way  Home  "  in  Album  IV,  are  also  character- 
istic and  beautiful.  The  reader  who  feels  Grieg' s  charm  at  all 
will  end  by  buying  all  five  Albums,  though  there  is  little  of 
value  in  the  last. 


Ill 

ANTONIN    DVORAK 


ANTONIN    DVORAK 


Ill 

ANTONIN    DVORAK 


N  an  October  evening  in  1892 
there  was  given  in  New  York 
City  a  "  Grand  Concert "  in  ex- 
ploitation of  the"  Eminent  Com- 
poser and  Director  of  the  Na- 
tional Conservatory  of  Music  of  America,"  Dr. 
Antonin  Dvorak.  There  was  an  orchestra  of 
eighty,  a  chorus  of  three  hundred,  and  an  audi- 
ence of  several  thousand  ;  the  ceremonies,  partly 
hospitable  and  partly  patriotic,  included  an  ora- 
tion, the  presentation  of  a  silver  wreath,  and  the 
singing  of  "  America  "  by  the  assembled  multi- 
tude. Outwardly  picturesque  as  the  occasion 
doubtless  was,  it  must  have  been  even  more 
striking  in  its  suggestion  of  the  extreme  con- 
trasts in  life  which  accompany  the  turning  of 
fortune's  wheel.     Here  was  a  man,  originally  a 

73 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

Bohemian  peasant,  a  village  butcher's  son,  who 
for  years  had  endured  the  most  grinding  pov- 
erty, the  most  monotonous  obscurity,  the  most 
interminable  labor  for  power  and  recognition, 
coming  at  last,  a  famous  musician,  to  hear  his 
works  performed  and  his  genius  extolled  in  a 
great,  enthusiastic  country  that  wanted,  and  was 
"  willing  to  pay  for,"  a  school  of  music.  Even 
statistics  are  eloquent  when  character  is  behind 
them  ;  at  a  salary  of  fifteen  thousand  dollars  a 
year  the  National  Conservatory  of  America  had 
engaged  as  principal  the  composer  who,  less  than 
twenty  years  before,  had  been  pensioned  by  the 
Austrian  Ministry  of  Education  just  one  hun- 
dredth of  that  sum.  Dvorak's  reception  in  New 
York  was  an  appropriate  outward  sign  of  a  vic- 
tory achieved  over  peculiarly  indifferent  destiny 
by  peculiarly  indomitable  pluck. 

As  one  looks  back  from  this  imposing  event 
over  the  course  of  Dvorak's  laborious,  persist- 
ent youth,  one's  attention,  no  matter  how  much 
it  is  at  first  engaged  with  the  changes  of  his 
outer  life,  with  his  progress  from  obscure  pov- 
erty to  comfort  and  fame,  soon  dwells  even  more 
on  the  underlying  identity  of  the  man  through 
all  changes,  on  his  unswerving  simplicity  of  na- 

74 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

ture  and  steadfastness  of  aim.  More  remark- 
able than  the  diversity  of  his  career  is  the  unity 
of  his  character.  From  first  to  last,  whether  in 
Miihlhausen,  Prague,  London,  or  New  York, 
he  is  essentially  a  peasant.  His  deepest  moral 
trait  is  the  dumb  persistence,  the  unthinking 
doggedness,  of  the  peasant.  His  mental  atmos- 
phere is  the  peasant's  innocence  of  self-con- 
sciousness, his  unintrospective  candor.  Not 
like  the  sophisticated  man,  who  weighs  motives 
and  foresees  obstacles,  does  he  pursue  his  troub- 
lous way.  He  is,  on  the  contrary,  like  an  en- 
gine placed  on  the  track  and  started ;  through 
darkness  and  day,  through  failure  and  success, 
through  weakness  and  strength,  he  steams  ahead, 
ever  propelled  by  irresistible  inner  force,  insen- 
sible and  unamenable  to  circumstance.  And 
his  musical  impulse  is  of  the  same  sort.  His 
aims  in  music  have  always  been  simple,  definite, 
unsophisticated  by  intellectualism.  Taking  keen 
delight  in  the  sensuous  beauty  of  sound,  gifted 
with  the  musical  sense  in  its  most  fundamental 
form  of  physical  susceptibility,  from  his  earliest 
days  he  set  about  learning  to  produce  pleasant 
effects  of  rhythm  and  consonance,  with  utter 
sincerity,  with  no  reference  to  derivative  and 

75 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

secondary  musical  values.  When,  as  a  boy,  he 
heard  the  villagers  playing  their  native  dances, 
his  blood  stirred  in  sympathy,  and  as  soon  as 
he  was  able  he  took  a  hand.  When  he  was 
older  he  invented  similar  pieces,  gradually  re- 
fining them,  but  always  cherishing  the  brightness 
of  tone,  the  vigor  of  rhythmic  life,  that  had  first 
won  his  devotion.  And  when,  in  New  York, 
an  experienced  and  honored  musician,  he  was 
expected  to  advise  our  composers,  it  was  highly 
characteristic  of  him  that  he  recommended  them 
to  pour  their  ideas  into  the  negro  molds.  Here 
was  a  music  simple,  sensuous,  highly  rhythmic  ; 
he  looked  no  further,  he  was  disconcerted  by  no 
ethnological  problems,  nor  even  by  the  incon- 
gruity that  any  man  of  the  world  would  have 
seen  between  negro  song  and  our  subtly  mingled, 
highly  complex  American  character.  Bohemian 
folk-melodies  had  expressed  him  ;  why  should 
not  plantation  tunes  express  us  ?  But  perhaps 
his  curious  simplicity  reveals  itself  most  of  all 
in  his  perfectly  uncritical  fecundity  as  a  com- 
poser. He  writes  with  extreme  rapidity,  and  in- 
defatigably.  The  great  Stabat  Mater  is  said  to 
have  been  completed  in  six  weeks,  and  his  opus 
numbers  extend  beyond  a  hundred.     He  writes 

76 


ANTONIN       DVORAK 

as  if  nothing  existed  in  the  world  but  himself 
and  an  orchestra  waiting  to  play  his  scores.  He 
is  never  embarrassed  by  a  sense  of  limitation,  by 
the  perception  in  others  of  powers  he  lacks. 
Though  he  has  studied  the  masters,  he  is  not 
abashed  by  them.  The  standards  of  scholar- 
ship, those  academic  bugbears,  have  for  him  no 
terrors.  Indeed,  of  all  great  composers  he  is 
perhaps  least  the  scholar,  most  the  sublimated 
troubadour,  enriching  the  world  with  an  apoth- 
eosized tavern-music.  In  reading  his  life  we 
must  never  forget  these  things :  his  simple  na- 
ture, his  sensuous  rather  than  emotional  or  in- 
tellectual devotion  to  music,  and  his  immunity 
from  the  checks  and  palsies  of  wide  learning  and 
fastidious  taste. 

There  is  in  a  rural  district  of  Bohemia,  on 
the  Moldau  River,  a  quiet  little  village  called 
Nelahozeves,  or,  in  German,  Muhlhausen,* 
where,  in  1841,  was  born  Antonin,  eldest  son 
of  Frantisek  Dvorak,  the  village  innkeeper  and 
butcher.  The  Dvoraks  were  people  not  without 
consideration  among  their  fellow-townsmen  ;  not 

*  A  graphic  picture  of  the  sleepy  little  place  is  given  in  the 
essay  on  Dvofak  in  "Studies  in  Modem  Music,"  W.  H, 
Hadow,  Second  Series.     Macmillan,  New  York,  1894. 

77 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

only  was  mine  host  of  the  tavern  a  widely  ac- 
quainted man,  but  his  wife's  father  was  bailiff 
to  a  prince.  One  may  imagine  the  potency,  in 
a  small  hamlet,  of  such  a  conjunction  of  prom- 
inence and  prestige.  Nevertheless,  as  social 
distinction  has  no  direct  effect  on  a  man's  in- 
come, and  as  the  butcher's  family  grew  in  the 
course  of  years  inconveniently  numerous,  it 
happened  that  Antonin,  the  eldest  of  eight 
children,  was  looked  to  in  early  youth  to  learn 
his  father's  trade  and  contribute  toward  the 
family  support.  Unfortunately,  he  wished  to 
be  a  musician.  Such  a  desire,  indeed,  chimer- 
ical as  it  may  have  appeared  at  the  time,  was 
natural  enough  in  a  boy  of  musical  sensibility 
who  had  been  surrounded  from  his  earliest  years 
by  a  people  passionately  devoted  to  music. 
Not  only  is  music  a  part  of  the  instruction  in 
the  Bohemian  public  schools,  but  it  is  the  ad- 
junct of  all  the  occasions  of  life.  As  many  as 
forty  dances  are  said  to  be  practiced  by  the 
peasants,  and  we  have  it  on  Dvorak's  own 
authority  that  laborers  in  Bohemia  sing  at  their 
work,  and  after  church  on  Sunday  begin  danc- 
ing, which  they  "  often  keep  up  without  cessa- 
tion   till    early   on  the   following    morning." 

7« 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

Taking  advantage  of  his  opportunities,  the  boy 
had  learned  at  fourteen  to  play  the  violin, 
the  organ,  and  the  piano,  and  to  sing.  It 
was  a  year  later  that,  summoned  by  his 
father  to  surrender  his  dreams  of  musician- 
ship, he  performed  an  exploit  well  worth 
mentioning,  as  an  early  example  of  his  in- 
defatigable persistence  and  his  blundering 
methods.  Hoping  to  enlist  his  father's  sym- 
pathy, he  wrote,  scored,  and  had  played  by  the 
village  band,  an  original  polka.  Mr.  Hadow 
tells  the  story  at  length;  its  point  is  that 
Dvorak,  whose  ambition  was  more  robust  than 
his  learning,  failed  to  write  the  trumpets  as 
transposing  instruments,  and,  of  course,  made  a 
distressing  fiasco.  "  There  is  some  little  irony 
in  the  disaster,"  comments  Mr.  Hadow,  "  if  it 
be  remembered  that  among  all  Dvorak's  gifts 
the  instinct  of  orchestration  is  perhaps  the  most 
conspicuous.  He  is  the  greatest  living  expon- 
ent of  the  art ;  and  he  was  once  in  danger  of 
forfeiting  his  career  through  ignorance  of  its 
most  elementary  principle."  He  did,  indeed, 
give  up  music  for  a  year,  but  in  October,  1857, 
was  allowed  by  his  father  to  enter  the  O^n 
School  at  Prague. 

79 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

Had  Dvorak  been  of  an  introspective  turn 
of  mind,  he  might  now  have  wondered  rather 
dismally,  as  the  months  went  by  in  Prague,  the 
paternal  allowance  ceased,  and  the  tuition  at 
the  Organ  School  proved  narrow  and  technical, 
whether  he  had  really  benefited  himself.  For- 
tunately, he  was  not  given  to  metaphysical 
speculation ;  he  got  what  training  he  could  from 
the  school  and  joined  a  band.  In  Miihlhausen 
he  had  often  taken  a  viola  part  in  the  village 
band  that  played  for  weddings  and  on  holidays; 
now  he  turned  his  skill  to  account  in  the  res- 
taurants of  Prague.  In  this  way,  and  by  play- 
ing also  in  a  church  orchestra  on  Sundays,  he 
managed  to  amass  about  nine  dollars  a  month, 
and  to  acquire  an  instinct  for  the  way  instru- 
mental parts  should  be  written.  The  only  ob- 
vious advantage  of  this  trying  period  was  the 
intimate  knowledge  of  instruments  it  gave  him. 
He  lived,  so  to  speak,  cheek  by  jowl  with  them, 
watching  them,  handling  them,  seeing  what  was 
written  for  them,  and  hearing  how  it  sounded. 
His  is  no  book-knowledge  of  orchestration.  On 
the  other  hand,  his  extreme  poverty,  the  limi- 
tations of  the  school,  and  his  lack  of  friends  to 
lend  him  scores  or  the  use  of  a  piano,  cut  him 

8a 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

off  cruelly  from  that  equally  essential  part  of 
education,  familiarity  with  classic  masterpieces 
and  the  traditions  of  academic  learning.  His 
band  played  only  popular  overtures  and  the 
usual  pot-pourris.  Sometimes  he  coaxed  a  ket- 
tle-drummer to  let  him  crouch  behind  the 
drums  and  hear  a  concert.  He  once  had  an 
opportunity  to  hear  "  Der  Freischiitz  "  for  the 
modest  sum  of  four  cents,  but  the  four  cents  was 
not  forthcoming,  and  "  Der  Freischiitz  "  went 
unheard.  He  could  afford  to  buy  no  scores, 
and  there  was  no  library  where  he  could  read 
them.  Such  were  the  meager  advantages  of 
which  he  made  good  use ;  such  the  heavy  ob- 
stacles he  gradually  surmounted. 

After  his  graduation  from  the  Organ  School 
in  i860  his  situation,  both  practical  and  musical, 
slowly  ameliorated.  From  Smetana,  who  gave 
him  a  position  in  the  orchestra  of  the  Interims- 
theater,  a  home  for  Bohemian  opera  founded  in 
1862,  he  received  what  was  of  even  more  impor- 
tance to  him,  the  loan  of  scores  and  encourage- 
ment in  composition.  Already  twenty-one,  he 
acquainted  himself  for  the  first  time  with  Bee- 
thoven's and  Mendelssohn's  symphonies  and 
chamber-works,  of  which  he  became  a  passionate 

81 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

Student,  and  with  Schumann's  songs.  For  almost 
ten  years  he  labored  steadily  and  silently.  It 
was  the  period  of  apprenticeship,  the  period  of 
arduous,  slow  mastery  of  technique  and  thought 
through  which  every  creative  artist  must  pass. 
The  mere  mass  of  his  exercises  is  bewildering  ; 
he  composed  and  destroyed  an  opera  and  two 
symphonies,  to  say  nothing  of  many  other 
sacrifices  on  the  altar  of  skill  of  which  not  even 
the  names  survive.  Peculiar  to  himself,  to  be 
sure,  and  scarcely  a  model  for  other  students, 
was  his  method  in  this  long  self-evocation.  Not 
like  Beethoven  did  he  meditate  and  revise  his 
themes,  spending  infinite  labor  on  sixteen  bars 
of  melody,  and  not  quailing  before  a  dozen  revi- 
sions so  they  were  needed  to  pare  away  the 
marble  and  reveal  the  perfect  form.  Not  like 
Brahms  did  he  install  a  systematic  training,  day 
by  day  winning  strength  and  plasticity  of  thought 
on  the  chest-weights  and  dumb-bells  of  contra- 
puntal exercise.  On  the  contrary,  he  forged 
ahead,  and  somehow,  without  knowing  where 
he  was  going  or  what  he  was  doing,  made  him- 
self a  master.  He  took  Parnassus  by  storm, 
as  it  were,  overran  rather  than  scaled  it,  and 
was  victor  more  by  quantity  than  by  quality  of 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

performance.  Yet  in  all  this  blundering  prog- 
ress he  was  protected  by  a  genuine  elevation  of 
aim.  Lacking  the  sense  of  tradition  and  the 
safeguards  of  scrupulous  taste,  he  was  not  with- 
out his  own  rugged  idealism.  And  so,  although 
he  doubtless  had  every  external  inducement  to 
join  the  ranks  of  the  national  movement  in 
music,  then  just  acquiring  momentum,  he  main- 
tained his  conscientious  silence  for  nearly  a  de- 
cade. His  compositions  saw  the  light  neither 
of  the  concert  hall  nor  of  the  printing-press; 
written  with  ardor,  they  were  burned  without 
regret.  Dvorak  showed  in  his  lehrjdhre  the 
self-respect  of  all  really  great  artists. 

It  was  early  in  the  seventies  that  he  finally 
emerged  from  his  studious  reserve  and  appeared 
before  the  world  with  an  opera,  "  The  King  and 
the  Collier,"  which  he  was  commissioned  to 
write  for  the  National  Theater.  So  clear  was 
the  patriotic  intent  of  this  commission,  so  entirely 
was  the  popular  interest  enlisted  in  Smetana's 
effort  to  build  up  a  Bohemian  school  of  music, 
that  it  is  hard  to  conceive  how  Dvorak  could 
have  fallen  into  the  error  he  now  made.  He 
prepared  for  his  fellow-countrymen  a  Wag- 
nerian music-drama.     The  situation  is  comic. 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

The  good  Bohemians,  come  to  hear  folk-tunes, 
were  given  leit-motifs  and  "  infinite  melody." 
If  they  failed  to  sympathize  with  his  adoration 
for  the  Bayreuth  master  (and  it  seems  indeed  to 
have  been  but  a  calf-sickness,  afterwards  bravely 
outlived),  if  "  The  King  and  the  Collier " 
was  a  flat  failure,  Dvorak  had  no  one  but  him- 
self to  blame.  At  this  point,  however,  as  at  so 
many  others  in  his  career,  his  unfailing  energy 
saved  the  day  so  nearly  lost  by  what  one  critic 
has  called  his  "  brainlessness."  He  set  to 
and  rewrote  his  work  entire,  leaving  not  a  single 
number  of  the  unhappy  music-drama.  But 
now  the  libretto,  which  had  at  first  been  spared 
a  disapproval  all  concentrated  upon  the  music, 
proved  worthless  and  flat,  and  the  opera  was 
damned  afresh.  Still  Dvorak  persisted.  Getting 
a  poet  to  set  an  entirely  new  "  book  "  to  his 
entirely  new  music,  he  made  at  last  a  success 
with  an  opera  of  which  Mr.  Hadow  well  says 
that'*  the  Irishman's  knife,  which  had  a  new 
blade  and  a  new  handle,  does  not  oflTer  a  more 
bewildering  problem  of  identity."  No  one  but 
Dvorak  would  have  so  bungled  his  undertak- 
ing ;  no  one  but  he  would  so  have  forced  it  to 
a  successful  issue. 

84 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

By  1873  Dvorak  was  well  started  on  the 
career  of  increasing  power  and  fame  that  he  had 
worked  so  hard  to  establish  on  firm  foundations. 
That  year  was  marked  not  only  by  his  install- 
ment as  organist  at  St.  Adalbert's  Church,  with 
a  comfortable  salary,  and  by  his  marriage,  but 
also  by  the  appearance  of  a  composition  which 
made  his  name  at  once  widely  known  in  Bohe- 
mia— the  patriotic  hymn  entitled  "  The  Heirs 
of  the  White  Mountain."  Four  years  later  his 
reputation  began  to  spread  beyond  the  border. 
It  was  in  1877  that  the  approbation  of  Brahms, 
then  a  commissioner  of  the  Austrian  Ministry 
of  Education,  to  which  Dvorak  had  submitted 
some  duets,  induced  Joachim  to  introduce  the 
young  Bohemian's  works  into  England  and  Ger- 
many, and  the  house  of  Simrock  to  publish 
them.  In  1878  the  Slavonic  Dances  made  their 
composer's  name  immediately  known  through- 
out the  musical  world.  His  great  Stabat  Mater, 
produced  in  England  with  acclaim  in  1883,  was 
the  first  of  several  choral  works  given  there  in 
the  next  few  years,  all  very  successfully.  In  1889 
he  was  decorated  by  the  Austrian  court.  In 
1890  he  received  an  Honorary  Doctorate  from 
the  University  of  Cambridge,  was  made  Doctor 

85 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

of  Philosophy  at  Prague,  and  was  appointed 
Professor  of  Composition  at  the  Conservatory 
there.  The  welcome  accorded  to  him  in  Amer- 
ica has  already  been  briefly  chronicled.  His 
sixtieth  birthday  was  celebrated  by  a  musical 
festival  in  1 901,  at  Prague,  where  he  now  makes 
his  home.  In  Dvorak's  varied  life  a  youth  of 
unusual  hardship,  of  an  almost  unparalleled 
severity  of  struggle  both  for  livelihood  and  for 
education,  has  been  crowned  with  years  full  of  a 
prosperity  and  honor  rarely  allotted  to  com- 
posers. 

That  time-honored  tool  of  artistic  criticism, 
the  distinction  between  thought  and  expression 
— or,  as  the  critics  say,  between  ethos  and  tech- 
nique— is  one  that  constantly  tempts  the  critic 
of  music,  and  always  betrays  him.  Very  se- 
ductive it  is,  because  analogy  with  other  arts  is 
so  plausible  a  device  for  exploiting  music ;  but 
push  it  to  its  logical  outcome  and  it  inevitably 
vanishes — the  form  proves  to  be  not  the  invest- 
iture, nor  even  the  incarnation,  of  the  thought, 
but  the  thought  itself.  Change  the  expression 
and  you  annihilate  the  thought ;  develop  a 
technique  and  you  create  a  system  of  ideas ; 
mind  and   body  are  ultimately  one.     Now  the 

86 


ANTONIN        DVORAk 

case  of  Dvorak  is  strongly  corroborative  of 
such  a  theory  of  the  identity  in  music  of  ethos 
and  technique.  What  is  seen  from  one  angle 
of  vision  as  his  love  of  exotic  color,  his  devo- 
tion to  curious  intervals  of  melody,  sudden  ex- 
cursions in  tonality,  and  odd  molds  of  rhythm, 
appears  from  the  other,  the  technical  side, 
as  mastery  of  orchestral  sonority  and  inheri- 
tance of  a  peculiar  musical  dialect.  It  is  there- 
fore difficult  to  account  exactly  for  the  genesis 
of  any  given  quality  in  his  work.  Is  it  the  re- 
sult of  an  outer  influence  acting  upon  a  pecu- 
liarly plastic  nature,  or  does  it  spring  rather 
from  deeply-rooted  individual  traits  that  have 
dominated  the  course  of  his  development  and 
shaped  his  style  .?  Did  his  early  experiences  in 
a  village  band,  for  example,  awaken  and  evolve 
his  sense  of  tone  color,  or  would  his  music 
have  been  primarily  sensuous  even  if  he  had 
had  the  training  of  Brahms,  Tschaikowsky,  or 
Cesar  Franck  ?  It  seems  probable  that  here,  as 
elsewhere,  inner  endowment  and  outer  influence 
have  reacted  with  a  subtlety  and  complexity 
that  defy  analysis,  and  thought  and  style  are 
but  aspects  of  one  essence.  Consequently,  the 
diflFerence  between  ethos  and   technique,  how- 

«7 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

ever  serviceable  as  a  means  of  getting  over  the 
ground,  as  a  tool  of  investigation,  will  mislead 
us  unless  we  constantly  remember  how  partial 
is  Its  validity.  We  may  indeed,  for  the  sake 
of  clearness  and  thoroughness,  speak  first  of 
one  aspect,  then  of  another,  but  the  man  we  are 
studying,  like  the  shield  in  the  allegory,  remains 
all  the  time  one. 

To  approach  the  technical  side  first,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  rich  quality  of 
Dvorak's  tone,  a  quality  so  striking  that  Mr. 
Hadow  places  him  with  Beethoven,  Berlioz, 
and  Wagner  in  the  class  of  supreme  masters  of 
orchestration,  would  never  have  been  attainable 
to  one  who  had  not  had  his  peculiar  experience. 
He  has  the  practical  player's  exhaustive  knowl- 
edge of  instruments,  which  enables  him,  by 
disposing  the  parts  always  in  eflfective  registers, 
to  get  a  rich  and  mellow  sonority  in  his  ensemble 
writing.  Examine  any  chord  in  his  scores,  and 
you  see  that  each  player  gives  a  tone  that  he 
can  sound  fully  and  advantageously,  and  that 
each  choir  of  instruments — the  strings,  the 
wood,  the  brass — gives  in  isolation  an  effective 
chord.  The  resultant  harmony  is  a  well-bal- 
anced, thoroughly  fused  mass  of  tone.     But  far 

88 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

more  important  than  the  power  to  write  effect- 
ively disposed  single  chords  is  the  power  to 
weave  a  fabric  of  close  texture  and  firm  con- 
sistency, to  make  the  orchestra  sustain,  ramify, 
and  reinforce  itself,  so  to  speak.  By  far  the 
best  way  to  secure  this  solidity  of  texture  is  to 
write  coherent  and  well-individualized  melodies 
in  the  different  parts,  which  serve  as  strands  to 
bind  the  whole.  Such  is  the  method  of  Bee- 
thoven among  classic  and  of  Tschaikowsky 
among  romantic  composers,  and  so  efficient  is 
good  polyphonic  or  "  many-voiced  "  writing  as 
a  means  of  sonority  that  it  has  been  truly  said, 
"  Pure  voice-leading  is  half  an  orchestra."  Yet 
great  skill  is  required  for  such  polyphonic  writ- 
ing, since  all  the  independent  melodies  must 
cooperate  harmoniously;  and  Dvorak,  who  got 
little  academic  training  as  a  boy,  is  not  a  great 
contrapuntist.  Just  here,  however,  his  band 
experience  coming  to  his  aid,  he  was  saved 
from  writing  lumpish,  doughy  stuff — in  which 
one  poor  tune  in  the  soprano  vainly  attempts 
to  hold  up  a  heavy  weight  of  amorphous  "  ac- 
companiment " — by  his  extraordinary  knack  of 
vitalizing  his  entire  mass  of  tone  through  rhyth- 
mic individualization  of  the  parts.     Taking  a 

»9 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

skeleton  of  simple  harmony,  he  manages  to  write 
for  the  different  voices  such  salient  and  indi- 
vidual rhythms  that  they  stand  out  with  almost 
the  grace  of  melodious  contrapuntal  parts.  It 
is  a  sort  of  metrical  yeast  to  keep  his  bread 
from  being  soggy.  Numerous  examples  will  at 
once  occur  to  students  of  his  scores,  particularly 
from  the  Slavonic  Dances  and  Rhapsodies.  A 
third  form  of  his  orchestral  mastery  might  be 
pointed  out  in  the  well-calculated  special  effects 
for  single  instruments,  such  as  the  oboe  duet 
that  concludes  the  first  movement  of  the  Suite, 
opus  39,  which  occur  everywhere  in  his  scores. 
But  that  is,  after  all,  a  commoner  form  of  skill, 
whereas  rich  sonority  and  life  in  the  fabric  as 
the  result  of  rhythmic  individualization  of  the 
parts,  can  be  found  in  few  scores  so  highly  de- 
veloped as  in  those  of  Dvorak. 

As  regards  structure,  Dvorak  is  felicitous  but 
eccentric.  He  does  not  lay  out  his  plans  with 
the  careful  prevision  of  one  to  whom  balance 
and  symmetry  are  vital.  His  scheme  is  not 
foreordered,  it  is  sketched  currently.  Thus, 
for  example,  his  modulation  is  singularly  rad- 
ical, impulsive  and  haphazard.  He  loves  to 
descend  unexpectedly  upon  the  most  remote 

90 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

keys,  never  knows  where  he  will  turn  next,  and 
when  he  gets  too  far  from  home  returns  over 
fences  and  through  no-thoroughfares.  Often, 
with  him,  a  change  of  key  seems  dictated  mere- 
ly by  a  desire  for  a  particular  patch  of  color;  he 
wishes  to  brighten  the  tonal  background  with 
sharps  or  mollify  it  with  flats,  and  plump  he 
comes  to  his  key,  little  caring  how  he  gets  there 
or  where  he  is  going  next.  His  use  of  contrasts 
of  tonality  is  thus  characteristic  of  his  love  of 
color-effects  for  themselves  and  his  willingness 
to  subordinate  to  them  purity  of  line.  Again, 
it  is  probably  not  forcing  the  point  to  see  in  his 
use  of  uneven  rhythms,  such  as  five  and  seven 
bar  periods,  another  instance  of  the  same  ten- 
dency to  license.  Undoubtedly  in  part  a 
legacy  from  Bohemian  folk-song,  which  is 
particularly  rich  in  them,  his  uneven  rhythms 
seem  to  be  also  in  part  due  to  a  certain  fortuit- 
ousness of  mind.  It  is  as  if  he  closed  his 
phrase,  without  regard  to  strict  symmetry, 
wherever  a  good  chance  offered.  The  theme 
of  the  Symphonic  Variations,  opus  78,  is  an  ex- 
ample. It  is  interesting  to  contrast  this  rhyth- 
mic trait  of  Dvoi^ak's  with  Grieg's  accurate  and 
sometimes  almost  wearisome  precision  of  out- 

9« 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

line.  Both  men  derive  from  folk-music  a  love 
of  incisive  meter — their  music  has  a  strong 
pulse ;  but  Grieg,  who  is  precise,  lyrical,  sensi- 
tive to  perfection  of  detail,  is  really  finical  in 
his  unfaltering  devotion  to  square-cut  sections, 
while  Dvorak,  more  wayward,  less  perfect  and 
exquisite,  strays  into  all  sorts  of  odd  periods. 
His  somewhat  arbitrary  treatment  of  tonality 
relations  and  of  rhythm  is  thus  illustrative  of  a 
general  laxity  of  method  highly  characteristic  of 
the  man.  In  contrast  with  a  jealously  accur- 
ate artist  like  Grieg,  he  is  felicitous  more  by 
force  of  genius  than  by  wisdom  of  intent. 

Dvorak's  childlike  spontaneity  is  in  no  way 
better  exemplified  than  by  his  attitude  toward 
folk-music,  and  here  again  he  may  profitably  be 
contrasted  with  Grieg.  Both  devotees  of  local 
color  have  enriched  art  with  unfamiliar  linea- 
ments and  unused  resources,  yet  their  modes 
of  procedure  have  been  quite  different.  Grieg, 
traversing  the  usual  mill  of  German  musical 
education,  turned  consciously  to  Norwegian 
folk-song  to  find  a  note  of  individuality. 
Struck  with  the  freshness  of  the  native  dances, 
he  transplanted  them  bodily  into  his  academic 
flower-pots.     His    courtship    of    the    national 

9a 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

Muse  was  conscious,  sophisticated,  and  his 
style  is  in  a  sense  the  result  of  excogitation. 
Dvorak,  on  the  contrary,  growing  up  in  his 
small  Bohemian  village,  unable  to  get  classic 
scores,  assiduously  fiddling  throughout  his 
youth  at  village  fetes  where  the  peasants  must 
have  a  scrap  of  tune  to  dance  by,  became  thor- 
oughly saturated  with  the  rude  music.  It 
moved  in  his  veins  like  blood  ;  it  was  his  other 
language.  Thus  the  two  men  were  at  quite 
polar  standpoints  in  relation  to  nationalism. 
With  Dvorak  it  was  a  point  of  departure,  with 
Grieg  it  was  a  goal  of  pilgrimage.  And  so, 
while  the  Norwegian  has  tended  to  immure 
himself  in  idiosyncrasy,  the  Bohemian  has 
rubbed  off  provincialisms  without  losing  his  in- 
heritance. His  music,  while  retaining  the  sen- 
suous plenitude,  the  individual  flavor,  the  florid 
coloring,  with  which  his  youth  endowed  it,  has 
acquired,  with  years  and  experience,  a  scope  of 
expression,  a  maturity  of  style,  and  a  universal- 
ity of  appeal  that  make  it  as  justly  admired  as 
it  is  instinctively  enjoyed. 

Imperceptibly  we  have  passed  from  technical 
analysis  into  personal  inventory.  And  indeed, 
all  Dvorak's  peculiarities  of  style  may  be  viewed 

93 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

as  the  inevitable  manifestations  of  a  nature  at 
once  rich  and  naive.  His  music  makes  a  de- 
lightfully frank  appeal.  It  is  never  somber, 
never  crabbed,  never  even  profound.  It  breathes 
not  passion,  but  sentiment.  It  is  too  happily- 
sensuous  to  be  tragic,  too  busy  with  an  im- 
mediate charm  to  trouble  about  a  remote  mean- 
ing. Even  when  he  is  moving,  as  in  the  Largo 
of  the  New  World  Symphony,  is  it  not  with  a 
gentle,  half-sensuous  pathos,  a  wistfulness  more 
than  half  assuaged  by  the  wooing  sweetness  of 
the  sounds  that  fill  our  ears  ?  To  him  music 
is  primarily  sweet  sound,  and  we  shall  miscon- 
ceive his  aim  and  service  if  in  looking  for  some- 
thing deep  in  him  we  miss  what  is,  after  all,  very 
accessible  and  delightful  for  itself — the  simple 
charm  of  his  combinations  of  tone. 

Bibliographical  Note. — Dvorak's  fecundity  is  surprising. 
He  has  written  cantatas,  oratorios,  a  mass,  a  requiem,  and  hymns 
for  chorus  and  orchestra ;  five  symphonies,  five  overtures,  four 
symphonic  poems,  the  well-known  Slavonic  Dances  and  Rhapso- 
dies, concertos  for  piano,  violin,  and  violoncello,  the  inimitable 
Suite,  op.  39,  the  Symphonic  Variations,  op.  78,  and  other  or- 
chestral works  of  smaller  proportions  ;  seven  string  quartets,  a 
sextet,  three  trios,  a  terzetto  for  two  violins  and  a  viola,  two 
string  quintets,  a  piano  quintet,  a  piano  quartet,  a  sonata  for  vio- 
lin and  piano,  and  a  serenade  for  wind  instruments;  and,  finally, 
many  piano  works  and  songs.    He  is  at  his  best  in  his  orchestral 

94 


ANTONIN        DVORAK 

and  chamber  works,  of  which  the  following  are  typical  :  the 
Slavonic  Dances,  op.  46  and  72,  the  Slavonic  Rhapsodies,  op. 
45,  the  Suite,  op.  59,  the  Symphony,  "  From  the  New  World," 
op.  95,  and  the  Scherzo  Capriccioso,  op.  66  ;  the  Sextet,  op. 
48,  the  Quartet  and  Quintet  on  negro  themes,  op.  96  and  97, 
the  Piano  Quintet,  op.  81,  and  the  Piano  Quintet,  op.  87. 
Though  these  compositions  lose  much  in  transcription,  they  are 
all  obtainable  in  four-hand  piano  arrangements.  The  piano 
music  is  somewhat  unidiomatic  except  the  later  things,  but  the 
Mazurkas,  op.  56,  the  Poetische  Stimmungsbilder,  op.  85,  and 
the  Humoreskes,  op.  i  o  i ,  are  worth  knowing.  Of  the  songs, 
nine  of  the  best  are  published  separately  by  the  house  of  Sim- 
rock,  and  the  two  most  popular  ones,  "  Gute  Nacht "  and 
«« Als  die  Alte  Mutter,"  are  to  be  had  in  Schirmer's  series  en- 
titled "  Gems  of  German  Songs."  A  study  of  these  will  prob- 
ably arouse  a  desire  for  more,  and  the  student  may  buy  the  Gipsy 
Songs,  op.  55,  and  the  Love  Songs,  op.  83.  The  duets, 
"  Klange  aus  Mahren,"  not  very  well  known,  are  characteristic. 


IV 

CAMILLE    SAINT- 

SAENS 


CAMILLE    SAINT-SaENS 


IV 
CAMILLE     SAINT 
S  AE  NS 


r  is  a  principle  of  musical  expression 
that  of  the  two  great  types  of  tem- 
perament, the  active  and  the  contem- 
plative, the  first  tends  to  express 
itself  in  strongly  rhythmic  figures, 
the  second  in  phrases  of  vaguer  outline,  full  of 
sentiment  not  easily  to  be  confined  in  molds. 
The  man  of  action  is  incisive,  vigorous,  com- 
pact in  utterance  ;  the  mystic  is  by  contrast 
indefinite  and  discursive.  It  has  been  well  es- 
tablished, indeed,  that  primeval  music  was  the 
product  of  two  modes  of  instinctive  emotional 
expression,  the  gesticulatory  and  the  vocal, 
dance  and  song ;  and  throughout  its  growth 
these  two  strands,  however  closely  they  may 
intertwine,  can  still  be  traced.  Thus  it  happens 
that  even  to-day  we  find  the  complex  work  of 


99 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

modern  musicians  getting  a  special  impress  of 
personality  and  style  according  as  the  rhythmic 
or  the  melodic-harmonic  faculty  predominates 
in  the  individual.  One  man's  music  will  be 
notable  for  its  strong  impulse,  its  variety  and 
vivacity  of  rhythm  ;  another's  will  appeal  to  the 
more  dreamy  and  sentimental  part  of  our 
natures,  will  speak  to  our  hearts  so  movingly 
that  we  shall  recognize  its  descent  from  the 
song  rather  than  from  the  dance.  And  in  all 
such  cases  the  first  man  will  be  of  the  active 
temperament,  a  man  of  the  world,  of  many  in- 
terests and  great  nervous  force ;  the  second 
will  be  contemplative,  inclined  to  the  monastic 
Hfe,  and  of  great  heart  rather  than  keen  intelli- 
gence. 

Such  an  antithesis  of  artistic  product  and  of 
personal  character  exists  in  a  peculiar  degree 
between  Camille  Saint-Saens  and  Cesar  Franck, 
the  two  greatest  composers  France  has  pro- 
duced since  Bizet.  Each  of  these  men  is  great 
by  virtue  of  qualities  somewhat  wanting  in  the 
other.  The  one  is  clever,  worldly,  learned — 
and  a  little  superficial ;  the  other,  profound,  re- 
ligious, of  singularly  pure  and  exalted  spirit,  is 
yet  emotional  to  the  verge  of  abnormality.  And 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

SO  with  their  music ;  that  of  Saint-Saens  is 
energetic,  lucid,  consummately  wrought,  while 
Franck's,  more  moving  and  more  subtle,  is 
so  surcharged  with  feeling  as  to  become  vague 
and  inarticulate.  A  review  of  their  lives  and  a 
brief  analysis  of  their  work  will  bring  out  more 
clearly  this  divergence  of  nature,  which,  in  spite 
of  the  many  traits  they  have  in  common,  has 
determined  them  to  very  different  careers  and 
exacted  of  them  very  dissimilar  artistic  services. 
At  a  concert  given  in  Paris  in  1 846  appeared 
a  new  prodigy,  a  boy  pianist,  "  le  petit  Saint- 
Saens,"  as  the  "  Gazette  Musicale  "  announced 
him,  who,  only  ten  and  a  half  years  old,  played 
Handel,  Bach,  Beethoven,  and  Mozart,  "  with- 
out notes,  with  no  effort,  giving  his  phrases 
with  clearness,  elegance,  and  even  expression 
in  the  midst  of  the  powerful  effects  of  a  numer- 
ous orchestra  using  all  its  resources."  This, 
the  first  public  appearance  of  Saint-Saens,  was 
by  no  means  his  first  musical  exploit.  We  read 
that  he  began  the  study  of  the  piano  with  his 
great-aunt  at  the  age  of  three,  when  already  his 
sense  of  tone  was  so  keen  that  he  would  press 
down  with  his  left  hand  the  slender  fingers  of 
the  right  until  they  became  strong  enough  to 

101 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

satisfy  his  exacting  requirements ;  that  at  five 
he  composed  little  waltzes ;  that  at  ten  he 
played  fugues  by  Bach,  a  concerto  of  Hummel, 
and  Beethoven's  C-minor  Concerto ;  and  that 
he  could  tell  the  notes  of  all  the  clock-chimes 
in  the  house,  and  once  remarked  that  a  person 
in  the  next  room  was  "  walking  in  trochee:." 
By  the  time  he  was  seventeen  he  had  earned 
wide  reputation  as  a  pianist,  had  taken  prizes 
for  organ-playing  at  the  conservatory,  and  had 
written  an  ode  for  chorus,  solo,  and  orchestra, 
and  a  symphony.  Thus  early  did  he  lay  the 
foundations  of  that  skill  which  in  the  early  sev- 
enties, when  at  Wagner's  house  he  played  on 
the  piano  the  "  Siegfried  "  score,  won  from  von 
Billow  the  remark  that,  with  the  exception  of 
Wagner  and  Liszt,  he  was  the  greatest  musician 
living. 

The  surprising  energy  and  versatility  shown 
at  the  opening  of  Saint-Saens's  career  have 
proved,  in  the  course  of  time,  to  be  the  salient 
traits  of  his  typically  Gallic  nature.  He  is,  to 
a  remarkable  degree,  the  complete  Frenchman. 
He  has  all  the  intellectual  vivacity,  all  the 
nervous  force,  the  quick  wit  and  worldly  pol- 
ish, even  the  physical  swarthiness  and  the  dry 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

keenness  of  visage,  that  we  associate  with  his 
countrymen.  M.  Georges  Servieres,  in  his  "  La 
Musique  Fran9aise  Moderne,"  gives  the  fol- 
lowing excellent  description  :  "  Saint-Saens  is 
of  short  stature.  His  head  is  extremely  origi- 
nal, the  features  characteristic ;  a  great  brow, 
wide  and  open,  where,  between  the  eyebrows, 
the  energy  and  the  tenacity  of  the  man  reveal 
themselves ;  hair  habitually  cut  short,  and 
brownish  beard  turning  gray ;  a  nose  like  an 
eagle's  beak,  underlined  by  two  deeply  marked 
wrinkles  starting  from  the  nostrils,  eyes  a  little 
prominent,  very  mobile,  very  expressive.  The 
familiars  of  his  Mondays,  those  who  knew  the 
artist  before  injured  health  and  family  sorrows 
had  darkened  his  character,  remember  that 
there  was  about  him  then  a  keen  animation, 
a  diabolic  mischievousness,  a  railing  irony,  and 
an  agility  in  leaping  in  talk  from  one  subject  to 
another  with  a  sprightliness  of  fancy  that 
equaled  the  mobility  of  his  features,  which 
were  animated  at  one  and  the  same  moment  by 
the  most  contrary  expressions ;  and  I  could 
cite  as  instances  of  his  gay  humor  many  funny 
anecdotes  that  he  loved  to  tell,  adjusting  on  his 
nose  the  while,  with  both  hands,  in  a  way  pe- 

103 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

culiar  to  him,  his  eye-glasses,  behind  which  his 
eyes  sparkled  with  malice."  Some  examples  of 
this  railing  irony  of  Saint-Saens  are  preserved. 
There  is,  for  instance,  a  story  of  an  ambitious 
woman  at  one  of  his  "  Mondays,"  who  fairly 
browbeat  him  into  accompanying  her  two 
daughters  in  a  duet.  After  enduring  as  long 
as  he  could  the  torture  of  their  timeless  and 
tuneless  performance,  he  turned  to  the  mother 
with,  "  Which  of  your  daughters,  madam,  do 
you  wish  me  to  accompany  ?  "  A  man  of  his 
wit  naturally  found  himself  at  home  In  Paris 
society,  and  counted  among  his  friends  for 
years  such  people  as  the  Princess  Pauline  Met- 
ternich,  Mme.  Viardot-Garcia,  and  Meissonier, 
TourgeniefF,  and  Dumas.  A  story  told  in  the 
"  Figaro,"  of  how  at  Madame  Garcia's,  where 
he  often  played  both  the  organ  and  the  piano, 
he  would  pass  from  improvising  "  masterly 
pages  "  in  the  contrapuntal  style  to  waltzes  for 
the  young  people  to  dance  by,  illustrates  in 
little  that  peculiar  combination  of  distinction 
and  gayety,  characteristic  of  Paris,  which  is  the 
native  air  of  Saint-Saens. 

But  this  adept  metropolitan  is  also  an  invet- 
erate nomad.     Not  content  with  traveling  all 
104 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

over  Europe  in  his  virtuoso  tours,  he  has  long 
had  the  habit  of  wintering  in  outlandish  places 
like  the  Canary  Islands.  Often  he  leaves  home 
without  announcing  to  any  one  his  departure, 
or  even  giving  friends  his  addresses ;  some- 
times without  knowing  himself  where  he  will 
go.  The  spectacle  of  distant  lands  and  alien 
races  has  for  him  an  inexhaustible  fascination. 
In  writing  of  his  experiences  in  England,  where 
he  went  in  1893  to  receive  the  doctor's  de- 
gree from  Cambridge,  he  dwells  with  gusto  on 
the  procession  of  dignitaries,  at  the  head  of 
which,  he  says,  "  marched  the  King  of  Bahon- 
agar,  in  a  gold  turban  sparkling  with  fabulous 
gems,  a  necklace  of  diamonds  at  his  throat." 
'*  Dare  I  avow,"  he  adds,  "  that,  as  an  enemy 
of  the  banalities  and  the  dull  tones  of  our  mod- 
ern garments,  I  was  enchanted  with  the  adven- 
ture ? "  And  in  his  charming  little  essay, 
"  Une  Traversee  de  Bretagne,"  the  same  enthu- 
siasm throws  about  his  oboe-playing  ship-cap- 
tain the  glamour  of  romance.  On  his  first  trip 
to  the  Canaries,  made  incognito,  he  is  said  to 
have  offered  himself  as  a  substitute  to  sing  a 
tenor  part  in  "  Le  Trouvere,"  and  to  have 
come  near  appearing  in  this  incongruous  role. 

los 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

When  his  grand  opera,  "  Ascanio,"  was  pro- 
duced at  Paris,  he  scandalized  his  friends  and 
the  public  by  being  absent  from  the  first  per- 
formance. Diligent  inquiry,  and  even  the 
efforts  of  the  diplomatic  agents  of  the  Govern- 
ment, failed  to  discover  his  whereabouts,  and  it 
was  actually  rumored  that  he  had  died  in  Cey- 
lon, on  his  way  to  Japan.  But  all  the  while  he 
was  happily  basking  in  the  sun  at  Palma,  scrib- 
bling verses.  Finally  his  fondness  for  astron- 
omy is  well  known,  and  he  is  said  to  have  a 
private  observatory  in  some  "  ultimate  island." 
There  is  much  about  this  picturesque  French- 
man that  reminds  one  of  the  heroes  of  Jules 
Verne's  romances. 

When  he  is  at  home,  Saint-Saens  carries  on 
a  many-sided  activity  of  which  composition  is 
hardly  more  than  half.  For  one  thing,  he 
is  indefatigable  in  his  efforts  to  improve 
public  taste.  In  1864  he  gave  in  a  series  of 
concerts  all  the  concertos  of  Mozart ;  in  1878, 
such  is  the  catholicity  of  his  taste,  he  organized 
concerts  to  produce  Liszt's  Symphonic  Poems. 
He  has  done  much  for  musical  bibliography 
by  his  careful  editions  of  Gluck,  Rameau,  and 
others.  In  1871  he  took  active  measures  to 
106 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

better  the  opportunities  of  young  native  com- 
posers. At  that  time,  as  he  puts  it,  "  the 
name  of  a  composer  at  once  French  and  living, 
upon  a  programme,  had  the  property  to  put 
everybody  to  flight."  The  great  improvement 
that  has  taken  place  since  then  is  due  largely  to 
him  and  his  brother-workers  of  the  National 
Society  of  Music. 

His  two  volumes  of  critical  essays,  "  Harmo- 
nic et  Melodie  "  and  "  Portraits  et  Souvenirs," 
are  marked  by  soundness  of  principle,  broad 
eclecticism  of  taste,  and  a  pungent,  epigram- 
matic style.  In  general  temper  he  is  classical 
without  being  pedantic  ;  that  is  to  say,  he  has 
no  superstitious  awe  for  rules,  but  a  profound 
reverence  for  law.  The  licenses  of  modern 
technique  and  the  mental  vagueness  of  which 
they  are  the  reflection  find  in  him  a  formidable 
foe.  The  thrust  he  gives,  in  the  preface  of 
"  Portraits  et  Souvenirs,"  to  those  amateurs 
who  are  "  annoyed  or  disdainful  if  the  instru- 
ments of  the  orchestra  do  not  run  in  all  direc- 
tions, like  poisoned  rats,"  is  typical  of  his  atti- 
tude and  method.  He  is  a  master  of  innuendo 
and  delicate  sarcasm,  which  he  always  employs, 
however,  to  protect  art  against  afi^ectation  and 
107 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

ignorance.  In  dealing  with  the  theory  that 
music  depends  for  its  effect  on  physical  pleas- 
ure, he  speaks  derisively  of  the  solo  voice 
which  one  can  "savor  at  one's  leisure,  like  a 
sherbet."  He  says  of  those  orchestral  con- 
ductors and  choirmasters  who  always  complain 
of  difficulties  that  they  "  love  above  all  their 
little  habits  and  the  calm  of  their  existence." 
Among  these  sparkling  sentences  one  comes 
frequently  also  upon  pieces  of  wisdom,  some- 
times expressed  with  rare  dignity,  as  when 
he  writes,  "  There  is  in  music  something  which 
traverses  the  ear  as  a  door,  the  reason  as  a  ves- 
tibule, and  which  goes  yet  further."  A  writer 
so  highly  gifted  with  both  raillery  and  elo- 
quence might  do  mischief  were  he  narrow  or 
intolerant.  That  Saint-Saens  is  neither  can  be 
seen  from  a  mere  enumeration  of  some  of  his 
subjects,  chosen  almost  at  random :  there  are 
essays  on  The  Oratorios  of  Bach  and  Handel, 
Jacques  Offenbach,  Liszt,  Poetry  and  Music, 
The  Nibelungen  Ring  and  the  Performances 
at  Bayreuth,  Don  Giovanni,  A  Defense  of 
Opera-Comique,  The  Multiple  Resonance  of 
Bills,  and    The    Wagnerian  Illusion. 

These  titles  indicate  a  wide  enough  range  o^ 
1 08 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

ijQterest,  but  Saint-Saens  is  furthermore  a  writer 
on  subjects  entirely  unconnected  with  music. 
His  devotion  to  philosophy  has  prompted  him 
to  publish  a  volume  called  "  Problemes  et 
Mysteres  ; "  an  antiquarian  interest  has  found 
expression  in  his  "  Note  sur  les  decors  de  The- 
atre dans  I'antiquite  romaine  ;  "  and  he  has 
printed  a  volume  of  poems  under  the  title 
"  Rimes  familieres."  Finally,  a  comedy  in  one 
act  called  "  La  Crampe  des  ecrivains  "  (a  dis- 
ease from  which  he  appears  never  to  have  suf- 
fered) has  been  successfully  produced  at  Paris. 
As  a  composer,  Saint-Saens  impresses  the 
student  first  of  all  by  his  excessive,  his  almost 
inordinate,  cleverness.  It  is  not  seemly  for  a 
human  being  to  be  so  clever;  there  is  some- 
thing necromantic  about  it.  Look  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  G-minor  Piano  Concerto  and  see 
a  modern  Frenchman  writing  like  the  great 
Bach.  See,  in  the  "  Danse  Macabre,"  Berlioz 
and  Johann  Strauss  amalgamated.  Listen  to 
the  rich  effects  of  tone  in  the  'Cello  Sonata  in 
C  minor.  Study  the  thematic  transformations 
and  the  contrapuntal  style  of  the  Symphony  in 
the  same  key.  Admire  the  lightness,  the  cob- 
web iridescence,  of  the  "  Rouet  d'Omphale." 
109 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

The  author  of  these  works  is  obviously  a  man 
of  great  intellectual  skill  and  versatility. 

Looking  more  closely,  one  observes  a  dual- 
ity of  style,  for  the  moment  puzzling,  which 
properly  understood  only  emphasizes  the  pecu- 
liarity of  his  artistic  impulse.  His  composi- 
tions are  of  two  well-marked  varieties  which  at 
first  seem  to  have  little  in  common.  To  begin 
with,  all  those  cast  in  the  conventional  sym- 
phonic mold — the  three  symphonies,  the  eight 
concertos,  three  for  violin  and  five  for  piano, 
and  most  of  the  chamber-music — are  severely, 
at  times  almost  aridly,  classical  in  conception 
and  execution.  They  are  "  absolute  music  "  of 
the  most  unequivocal  sort.  They  depend  for 
their  effect  on  clear  form,  well-calculated  sym- 
metry, traditional  though  interesting  melodic 
and  harmonic  treatment ;  their  themes  are  of  the 
family  of  Haydn  and  Mozart ;  their  structure 
is  that  perfected  by  Beethoven ;  their  orches- 
tration is  skillful  but  unobtrusive,  a  trans- 
parent medium  rather  than  a  rich  material  gar- 
ment. In  a  word,  they  are  very  pure  examples 
in  music  of  a  type  of  art — the  French  classic 
or  pseudo-classic  type — which  gains  little  from 
richness  of  material  or  variety  of  suggestion. 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

which  depends  for  its  appeal  on  clarity  and 
symmetry  of  form  and  on  clean  workmanship 
in  style.  But,  in  addition  to  these  conventional 
works,  Saint-Saens  has  produced  a  whole  muse- 
um of  exotics,  in  which  his  aim  is  to  delineate 
passions,  peoples,  and  places.  There  are  the 
four  Symphonic  Poems,  for  example,  the 
"  Rouet  d'Omphale,"  "  Phaeton,"  the  "  Danse 
Macabre,"  and  "  La  Jeunesse  d'Hercule,"  in 
which  he  assumes  the  role  of  story-teller.  In 
the  "  Nuit  a  Lisbonne,"  the  "  Jota  Aragonese," 
and  the  "  Rapsodie  d'Auvergne,"  he  makes  a 
tour  in  southern  Europe  ;  in  the  "  Suite  Alge- 
rienne  "  he  portrays  the  deserts  about  Algiers, 
and  in  his  opus  89  he  gives  us  a  fantasy  of  odd 
rhythms  and  outlandish  tonalities  supposed  to 
introduce  us  to  Africa.  Nothing  could  seem, 
at  the  first  blush,  more  diametrically  opposite 
to  the  pseudo-classic  works  than  these  exotics, 
which  among  their  academic  brothers  recall  the 
King  of  Bahonagar  at  Cambridge.  Yet  both 
kinds,  after  all,  when  one  looks  more  closely, 
are  products  of  the  widely  questing  intelligence, 
whose  interests  are  dramatic  rather  than  per- 
sonal. They  have  this  in  common,  that  neither 
is  of  primarily  emotional  origin,  that  both  are 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

expressions  of  a  mind  objective  and  alertly  ob- 
servant. The  difference  between  them  is  that 
in  the  one  case  this  observation  takes  for  object 
the  purely  musical  world  of  tones,  and  in  the 
other  nature's  world  of  persons,  nations,  races, 
and  climates.  But  whether  he  is  seeking  a 
piquant  rhythm  or  a  curious  turn  of  harmony, 
or  sketching  his  impression  of  Spain  or  Egypt, 
Saint-Saens  is  always  the  onlooker,  the  man  of 
the  world,  never  the  mystic  who  contemplates 
in  his  own  heart  the  forces  that  underlie  the 
universe. 

Strong  testimony  from  the  man  himself  to  the 
truth  of  this  view  is  indirectly  afforded  by 
his  essay  on  Liszt,  an  essay  which  is  further- 
more noteworthy  as  containing  in  half  a  dozen 
sentences  the  essential  truths  of  that  vexed 
question  of  programme-music.  He  is,  to  begin 
with,  as  assertive  as  we  should  expect  of  the 
necessity,  in  all  music,  of  absolute  beauty.  "  Is 
the  music  itself,"  he  says,  "  good  or  bad  ?  All 
is  there.  Whether  or  no  it  has  a  programme, 
it  will  not  be,  for  that,  better  or  worse."  Thus 
far  speaks  the  author  of  the  symphonies,  the 
concertos,  and  the  chamber-works.  The  com- 
poser of  the  symphonic  poems  and   the  geo- 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

graphical  pieces  continues  :  "  But  how  much 
greater  is  the  charm  when  to  the  purely  musical 
pleasure  is  added  that  of  the  imagination  cours- 
ing without  hesitation  over  a  determined  path, 
.  .  .  All  the  faculties  of  the  soul  are  put  in 
play  at  once,  and  toward  the  same  end.  I  can 
see  well  what  art  gains  from  this,  I  cannot  see 
what  it  loses."  Here  speaks,  recognizably 
enough,  the  Frenchman.  In  that  phrase  about 
"  the  imagination  coursing  without  hesitation 
over  a  determined  path  "  stands  clearly  revealed 
the  dramatic  point  of  view  characteristic  of 
French  art,  which  is  always  devoted  to  the 
spectacle  of  life  rather  than  to  the  elemental 
passions  which  underlie  it.  The  satisfactions 
Saint-Saens  finds  in  music  are  those  of  the  form- 
al musical  sense  and  of  "  the  imagination  cours- 
ing a  determined  path  ;"  of  the  emotional  satis- 
faction which  music  gives  so  generously  he  has 
nothing  to  say.  To  take  another  instance,  how 
admirably  logical  and  how  adequate  to  the  com- 
position, which  for  all  its  picturesque  grace 
leaves  one  cold,  is  the  "  programme  "  he  ap- 
pends to  the  "  Rouet  d'Omphale."  "  The  sub- 
ject of  this  symphonic  poem,"  he  writes,"  is  fem- 
inine seduction,  the  triumph  of  weakness  over 

113 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

Strength.  The  spinning-wheel  is  but  a  pretext, 
chosen  solely  with  a  view  to  the  rhythm  and  the 
general  effect  of  the  piece.  Those  interested  in 
the  study  of  details  will  see  at  page  19,  Hercules 
groaning  under  the  bonds  he  cannot  break,  and 
at  page  32  Omphale  laughing  at  the  vain  efforts 
of  the  hero."  Both  programme  and  piece  are 
the  creations  of  a  keen  intelligence  which  re- 
cords its  observations  with  accuracy  and  skill, 
but  makes  no  personal  revelation,  cares  not  to 
contemplate  itself,  and  is  moved  by  no  deep 
and  perhaps  vague,  but  nevertheless  creative, 
emotion. 

Lack  of  emotion,  then,  is  the  serious  defect 
of  this  master.  And  in  a  musician  it  is  in  truth 
serious.  Emotion  is  the  life  blood  of  the  mu- 
sical organism  ;  without  it  all  the  members  may 
be  shapely,  well  ordered,  highly  finished,  but 
all  will  be  cold  and  lifeless.  So  it  is  with  much 
of  this  clever  craftsman's  work.  Too  often 
there  is  graceful  melody,  arresting  harmony, 
ingenious  rhythm,  but  none  of  the  passion 
needed  to  fuse  and  transfigure  them.  Impas- 
sioned vocal  utterance,  the  song  element  in 
music,  is  seldom  heard  from  Saint-Saens.  In 
the  classic  works  he  manipulates,  in  the  exotic 

114 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

pieces  he  depicts  ;  nowhere  does  he  speak.  But 
to  speak,  to  voice  deep  feeling  directly,  though 
with  the  restraint  necessary  to  plastic  beauty, 
is  the  aim  and  the  justification  of  music.  Com- 
plex as  the  art  has  become  in  our  day,  the 
essence  of  it  is  still,  as  it  ever  must  be,  emo- 
tional expression ;  and  though  modern  com- 
posers sing  broader  songs  than  the  first  musi- 
cians, and  sing  them  on  instruments  rather 
than  with  the  voice,  they  must  equally  sing, 
and  their  song  must  proceed  from  their  hearts 
if  it  is  to  touch  the  hearts  of  others.  Hence 
Saint-Saens,  when  compared  with  a  man  of  pas- 
sionate earnestness  like  Cesar  Franck,  or  Schu- 
mann, or  Wagner,  inevitably  seems  superficial. 
Pieces  like  his  B-minor  Violin  Concerto,  with 
its  elaborate  classical  machinery,  its  well-planned 
contrasts  and  brilliant  effects,  and  the  vast 
Symphony  in  C-minor,  in  which  the  theme  un- 
dergoes such  wonderfully  skillful  manipulation, 
seem  so  little  the  expression  of  a  personal  im- 
pulse that  we  catch  ourselves  wondering  why 
he  wrote  them.  Elsewhere,  to  be  sure,  as  in 
the  Andante  of  the  'Cello  Sonata,  his  very  vir- 
tuosity achieves  such  noble  effects  that  we  for- 
get the  hand-made  quality  of  the  work.     But  it 

"5 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

is  seldom  indeed  that,  subordinating  workman- 
ship entirely,  he  gives  us  a  genuine  song  of 
feeling,  such  as  the  second  theme  of  the  Finale 
in  this  Sonata.  The  lift  and  impetus  of  this 
beautiful  theme  emphasizes  by  contrast  the 
emotional  emptiness  of  the  ingenious  web  that 
surrounds  it. 

While,  however,  we  may  with  propriety  rec- 
ognize the  lack  of  personal  ardor  in  Saint-Saens 
that  reduces  the  song  element  in  his  music  to  a 
minimum,  it  would  be  a  sad  mistake  to  exag- 
gerate the  limitation  or  to  forget  that  from  an- 
other and  perhaps  an  equally  valid  point  of 
view  he  is  a  great  musician.  However  he  may 
fall  short  as  a  melodist,  he  is  a  past-master  of 
rhythm  and  harmony,  spheres  in  which  feeling 
counts  for  less,  logic  for  more.  His  harmonic 
style  is  eminently  lucid.  To  him  a  chord  is 
part  of  an  organism,  not  a  bit  of  color  or  a 
phase  of  feeling.  A  series  of  chords  has  for  him 
all  the  tendency,  the  direction,  and  the  self-ful- 
fillment of  a  sentence  of  words  ;  to  omit  or  to 
change  one  would  be  like  striking  out  a  predi- 
cate or  an  object — the  sentence  would  not 
parse.  He  uses  most  those  chords  which 
point  in  a  definite   direction,  which   carry  in 

ii6 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

themselves,  so  to  speak,  the  indication  for  their 
fulfillment — the  dominant  and  secondary  sev- 
enths, and  suspensions  of  triads.  He  avoids 
the  vague  and  the  ambiguous.  And  although 
he  is  a  lover  of  novel  harmonic  effects,  and  an 
ingenious  inventor  of  them,  the  novelty  is 
always  a  new  form,  not  a  new  formlessness. 
His  modulation,  too,  is  of  an  extreme  clarity : 
he  never  falls  into  a  new  key,  so  to  speak,  as 
Dvorak  does ;   he  proceeds  thither. 

But  even  more  striking  than  the  clearness  of 
his  harmony  is  the  trenchant  perspicuity  of  his 
rhythm.  The  sense  of  rhythm  is  perhaps  the 
prime  criterion  of  intellectuality  in  a  composer. 
For  just  as  determinations  of  accent  and  meas- 
ure, such  as  occur  in  the  dances  of  the  most 
primeval  savages,  were  undoubtedly  the  earliest 
means  of  formulating  the  cries  and  wails  of  emo- 
tion which  underlie  all  musical  expression,  so 
throughout  musical  history  rhythm  has  been 
the  chief  formative  or  rationalizing  agent,  and  a 
vivid  sense  of  it  has  always  characterized  the 
more  intellectual  musicians.  The  dreamers  and 
the  sentimentalists  are  never  fastidious  of  ac- 
cent ;  It  is  the  clear,  active  minds  who  delight 
in  precise  meter.     Quite  inevitable  to  a  man  of 

117 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

Saint-Saens's  temperament,  then,  is  the  instinct 
for  strong,  various  and  subtle  rhythms  that  his 
compositions  reveal  at  every  page.  One  discerns 
it  in  his  fondness  for  pizzicato  effects  and  for  the 
percussion  instruments,  both  of  which  empha- 
size the  accent.  And  his  devotion  to  the  piano, 
which  he  uses  more  in  combination  with  other 
instruments  than  almost  any  other  composer,  is 
doubtless  due  to  the  fact  that  it  compensates  for 
its  lack  of  sustained  tone  by  a  special  incisiveness 
of  attack.  Another  significant  peculiarity  is  the 
short  groups  of  repeated  notes  that  occur  so 
often  in  his  writings  as  to  be  a  mannerism. 
They  are  found,  for  example,  in  the  fourth  of  his 
Variations  on  a  Theme  of  Beethoven,  opus  2Sy 
in  the  "  scherzando  "  section  of"  Africa,"  at  the 
opening  of  the  Trio,  opus  92,  in  the  accompani- 
ment of  the  well-known  air  from  "  Samson  et 
Dalila,"  "  Mon  coeur  s'ouvre  a  ta  voix,"  and  in 
the  third  of  the  Six  Etudes,  opus  52.  The  ef- 
fect of  this  device,  which  throws  a  strong  em- 
phasis on  the  first  of  the  reiterated  notes,  is  a 
peculiar  rhythmic  salience  Again,  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  minor  irregularities  in  a  regular  plan 
bring  out  all  the  more  clearly  the  larger  orderli- 
ness, Saint-Saens  loves  to  alternate  groups  of 
1x8 


CAMILLE       SAINT-SAENS 

four  notes  with  groups  of  three,  or  three  with 
two,  and  to  displace  his  accent  entirely  by  syn- 
copation, which,  when  properly  handled,  deep- 
ens the  ideal  stress  by  setting  the  actual  in  com- 
petition with  it. 

In  all  these  and  countless  other  ways  are  re- 
vealed the  accuracy  and  virtuosity  of  intellect 
that  distinguish  this  brilliant  Frenchman.  Clear- 
ness of  form  is,  on  the  whole,  so  much  rarer  in 
modern  music  than  wealth  of  meaning,  that  the 
art  in  our  day  has  peculiar  need  of  such  work- 
ers. Their  office  is  to  make  us  remember,  in 
our  welter  of  emotion,  the  perennial  delightful- 
ness  of  order  and  control.  They  are  the  apol- 
ogists of  reason,  without  which  feeling,  however 
noble,  must  become  futile,  inarticulate.  In  their 
precise,  well-constructed  works  we  find  a  relief 
from  the  dissipating  effects  of  mere  passion. 
We  breathe  there  a  serene,  if  a  somewhat  rare- 
fied, atmosphere.  Of  this  classic  lucidity  Saint- 
Saens  is  a  great  master.  However  dry  he  may 
sometimes  be,  he  is  never  turgid ;  however  su- 
perficial his  thought,  it  is  never  vague  ;  he  offers 
us  his  artistic  sweets  never  in  the  form  of  syrup 
— he  refines  and  crystallizes  them.  If,  then,  we 
of  a  race  emotionally  profounder  and  mentally 
119 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

more  diffuse  find  his  music  sometimes  empty 
for  all  its  skill,  we  must  not  for  that  reason  un- 
derrate the  service  he  does  for  music  by  insist- 
ing on  articulateness  in  feeling,  logic  in  devel- 
opment, and  punctilious  finesse  in  workmanship. 

Bibliographical  Note. — Saint-Saens's  best  orchestral  works 
are  arranged  not  only  for  four  hands,  but  for  two  players  at  two 
pianos,  a  combination  of  which  he  is  extremely  fond.  It  is  in- 
teresting to  play  in  this  way  the  four  symphonic  poems,  *♦  La 
Rouet  d'Omphale,"  "Phaeton,"  the  <<Danse  Macabre,"  and 
*  <  La  Jeunesse  d'  Hercule. ' '  The  five  Piano  Concertos  are  also 
excellent.  The  symphonies  are  rather  dry.  Of  the  chamber- 
music,  the 'Cello  Sonata,  op.  32,  and  the  Violin  Sonatas,  op. 
75  and  102,  are  particularly  good.  The  piano  music  is  less 
original,  being  for  the  most  part  pseudo-classic  in  conception 
and  style.  Thus  the  Suite,  op.  90,  is  like  a  suite  of  Bach's 
with  the  sincerity  taken  out.  On  the  whole  the  Six  fitudes,  op. 
52,  and  the  Album  of  six  pieces,  op.  72,  are  better  worth  study. 
The  former  contains  two  able  fugues,  the  latter  an  odd  '*  Caril- 
lon" in  7-4  time  and  an  attractive  «<  Valse."  There  is  charm 
in  "Les  Cloches  du  Soir,"  op.  85,  and  also  in  a  well-known 
melody,  without  opus-number,  called  *«Le  Cygne."  Saint- 
Saens  has  little  power  as  a  song-writer  ;  those  who  wish  to  rea- 
lize this  for  themselves,  may  purchase  the  Schirmer  Album  of 
fifteen  of  his  songs.  To  his  numerous  operas  no  reference  is 
made  in  the  present  essay,  the  subject  of  which  is  his  contribu- 
tion to  piire  music. 


CfeSAR     FRANCK 


CESAR    FRANCK 


CfiSAR     FR ANCK 


* 


HEN  we  turn  from  the  brilliant 
Parisian  we  have  been  study- 
ing to  that  obscure  and  saintly 
man,  Cesar  Franck,  the  only 
French  contemporary  of  Saint- 
Saens  who  is  worthy  to  be  ranked  with  him  as  a 
great  composer,  we  can  hardly  believe  ourselves 
in  the  same  country  or  epoch.  It  is  as  if  we 
were  suddenly  transported  from  modern  Paris 
into  some  mediaeval  monastery,  to  which  the 
noise  of  the  world  never  penetrates,  where  noth- 
ing breaks  the  silence  save  the  songs  of  worship 
and  the  deep  note  of  the  organ.  In  the  pres- 
ence of  this  devout  mystic  the  sounds  of  cities 
and  peoples  fade  away,  and  we  are  alone  with 
the  soul  and  God.  We  have  passed  from  the 
noonday  glare  of  the  intellect,  in  which  objects 
123 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

Stand  forth  sharp  and  hard,  into  the  soft  cathe- 
dral twiHght  of  religious  emotion  ;  and  putting 
aside  our  ordinary  thoughts  we  commune  for  a 
time  with  deeper  intuitions.  Or,  again,  it  is 
like  closing  a  volume  of  Taine  and  taking  up 
Maeterlinck.  From  the  streets  and  the  draw- 
ing-room we  pass  into  the  cloister,  where  dwell 
no  longer  men  and  things,  but  all  the  intangible 
presences  of  thought  and  feeling.  We  close 
our  eyes  on  the  pageant  of  experience,  to  reopen 
them  in  the  dim  inner  light  of  mtrospection, 
where,  if  we  may  believe  the  mystics,  they  will 
behold  a  truer  reality.  The  temperament  of 
Franck  is  thus  at  the  opposite  pole  from  that 
prehensile  Gallic  temperament  so  well  exempli- 
fied in  Saint-Saens,  and  we  should  find  the 
juxtaposition  of  the  two  men  as  the  greatest 
French  composers  of  their  time  highly  perplex- 
ing did  we  not  remember  that,  in  spite  of  his 
almost  lifelong  residence  in  Paris,  Cesar  Franck 
was  by  birth  and  blood,  like  Maeterlinck,  with 
whom  he  has  so  much  in  common,  a  Belgian. 
Exactly  how  much  the  peculiar  characters  of 
these  men  were  inherited  from  their  race  it  is  of 
course  impossible  to  say ;  but  any  one  who  has 
seen  the  placid  faces  of  the  Belgian  peasants, 

1*4 


CESAR       FRANCK 


with  their  calm,  almost  bovine  look  of  content- 
ment, must  recognize  there  a  trait  that  needs 
only  the  power  of  articulation  to  produce  a  nat- 
ural religion  of  feeling,  or  mysticism,  like  that 
of  Cesar  Franck  and  Maeterlinck.  It  was  the 
same  sort  of  self-sufficient  serenity,  the  anti- 
thesis of  Saint-Saens's  busy  worldliness,  that 
determined  the  course  of  Franck's  life,  so  ob- 
scure, so  uneventful,  so  dominated  by  high 
spiritual  purpose. 

Cesar-Auguste  Franck  (it  was  an  inapt  name 
for  so  pacific  a  being)  was  born  in  1822,  at 
Liege,  Belgium.  There  he  made  his  first 
musical  studies,  but  went  to  Paris  at  fifteen 
to  study  in  the  Conservatory.  Though  with- 
out the  precocity  of  "le  petit  Saint-Saens," 
he  must  have  been  a  solid  musician  at  sixteen, 
for  in  a  test  that  took  place  in  July,  1838, 
he  transposed  a  piece  at  sight  down  a  third, 
playing  it  "  avec  un  brio  remarquable,"  and  was 
awarded  the  first  grand  prize  of  honor  at  his 
graduation  in  1842.  Foregoing  the  career  of  a 
concert  pianist,  which  his  father  wished  him  to 
pursue,  "  repudiating  with  horror  and  disgust," 
as  one  of  his  biographers  has  it,  "  the  brilliant 
noise-making    that   people    long   mistook   for 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

music,"  he  turned  for  a  livelihood  to  that  labo- 
rious work  of  teaching  which  he  pursued  all 
the  rest  of  his  life  with  patient  fidelity. 

He  seems  to  have  been  an  almost  ideal 
teacher,  long-suffering  with  the  dull  pupils, 
painstaking  and  generous  with  the  able  ones, 
provoking  enthusiasm  in  all  by  his  contagious 
love  for  art  and  his  receptivity  to  ideas.  In 
a  degree  that  is  rare  even  among  the  best  teach- 
ers, he  combined  endurance  and  vivacity.  Giv- 
ing, all  his  life,  from  eight  to  ten  lessons  a  day, 
many  of  them,  even  after  he  had  made  his  rep- 
utation, in  girls'  boarding-schools  and  pensions 
of  the  usual  wearisome  sort,  he  yet  retained 
vitality  to  impart  to  the  best  minds  of  the  pres- 
ent generation  of  French  composers.  Though 
after  teaching  all  day,  often  not  returning  home 
until  supper-time,  he  would  in  the  evening  give 
correspondence  lessons  to  pupils  in  the  prov- 
inces, and  though  even  the  Sundays  were  filled 
with  his  duties  as  organist  and  choirmaster,  still 
he  often  found  time  to  assemble  his  favorite 
pupils,  and  to  discuss  with  them,  as  if  with 
perfect  equals,  their  exercises  and  his  own 
works.  One  of  these  pupils,  M.  Vincent 
d'Indy,  has  described  how  "  pere  Franck,"  as 

ii6 


CESAR       FRANCK 


they  called  him,  would  play  them  his  choral 
compositions,  singing  all  the  vocal  parts  in  "a 
terrible  voice;"  and  how  he  would  sit  at  the 
piano,  fixing  with  troubled  gaze  some  offending 
passage  in  an  exercise,  murmuring  anxiously, 
"  Je  n'aime  pas  .  .  .  Je  n'aime  pas,"  until  per- 
haps it  grew  to  seem  permissible,  and  with  his 
bright  smile  he  could  cry  "  J'aime  !  "  Thanks 
to  his  earnest  desire  to  appreciate  whatever  was 
good,  controlled  as  it  was  by  a  severely  classical 
taste,  he  could  make  his  students  good  work- 
men and  stern  critics  without  paralyzing  their 
individual  genius.  He  was  thorough  without 
being  rigid,  and  respected  learners  as  much  as 
he  revered  the  masters.  Naturally,  the  learners, 
in  their  turn,  felt  for  their  "  Pater  seraphicus," 
as  they  named  him,  an  almost  filial  affection. 
Emmanuel  Chabrier,  speaking  over  Franck's 
grave,  in  Montrouge  Cemetery,  voiced  the  feel- 
ings of  them  all  when  he  said  that  this  was  not 
merely  an  admirable  artist,  but  "  the  dear  re- 
gretted master,  the  most  gentle,  modest,  and 
wise.  He  was  the  model,  he  was  the  example." 
For  thirty-two  years,  that  is  to  say,  from 
1858  until  his  death,  Franck  was  organist  of 
the  Eglise  Ste.  Clotilde,  where  his  playing  must 
127 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

have  been  an  endless  inspiration  to  all  who 
heard  him,  though  his  modesty  kept  him  per- 
sonally inconspicuous.  One  likes  to  think  of 
this  quiet,  devout  musician,  animated  by  the 
purest  religious  enthusiasm,  advancing  year  by 
year  in  mastery  of  his  art,  producing  without 
ostentation  works  of  a  novel  and  radical  beauty. 
Few  of  his  listeners  could  have  conceived  that 
one  so  benignant  and  courteous,  but  so  easily 
forgotten,  was  making  himself  a  force  that 
modern  music  could  not  forget.  They,  who 
saw  only  the  husk  of  the  man,  could  not  guess 
what  treasures  of  humanity  and  genius  it  con- 
cealed. M.  d'Indy  well  describes  the  two 
aspects.  "  Any  one,"  he  says,  "  who  had  en- 
countered this  being  in  the  street,  with  his  coat 
too  large,  his  trousers  too  short,  his  grimacing 
and  preoccupied  face  framed  in  his  somewhat 
gray  whiskers,  would  not  have  believed  in  the 
transformation  that  took  place  when,  at  the 
piano,  he  explained  and  commented  on  some 
beautiful  work  of  art,  or  when,  at  the  organ,  he 
put  forth  his  inspired  improvisations.  Then 
the  music  enveloped  him  like  an  aureole ;  then 
one  could  not  fail  to  be  struck  by  the  conscious 
will  expressed  in  the  mouth  and  chin,  by  the 

iz8 


CESAR        FRANCK 


almost  superhuman  knowledge  in  his  glance; 
then  only  would  one  observe  the  nearly  perfect 
likeness  of  his  large  forehead  to  that  of  Beetho- 
ven." And  M.  Derepas  has  the  following 
paragraph  in  the  same  tenor :  "  It  was  there, 
before  the  keyboards,  his  agile  and  powerful 
feet  upon  the  pedals,  that  it  was  necessary  to 
see  Cesar  Franck.  His  beautiful  head  with  its 
finely  developed  brow  crowned  with  naturally 
curling  hair,  his  profound  and  contemplative 
expression,  his  features  marked  without  ex- 
aggeration, his  full,  well-cut  mouth  breathing 
health,  ...  all  wearing  the  aureole  of  genius 
and  of  faith — it  was  like  a  vision  of  another 
age  in  strong  contrast  with  the  turbulences  of 
the  day."  If  one  is  sometimes  sorry  that 
Franck  had  to  spend  so  much  time  teaching, 
one  cannot,  in  the  face  of  such  descriptions  as 
these,  regret  the  hours  he  passed  in  the  Eglise 
Ste.  Clotilde.  Its  atmosphere  was  native  to  his 
genius,  which  was  not  only  religious,  but  even 
ecclesiastical.  In  hearmg  his  "  musique  cathe- 
dralesque,"  as  Saint-Saens  well  called  it,  one 
can  almost  see  the  pillars  and  arches,  the  pure 
candle-flames  and  the  bowed  peasants  at  prayer. 
It  was  in  the  spare  moments  of  this  full  life 
129 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

that  Franck  found  time  to  write  his  extraordi- 
nary music.  Every  morning,  winter  and  sum- 
mer, rising  at  six,  he  set  aside  two  hours  for 
what  he  expressively  called  "  his  own  work." 
Then,  after  breakfast,  came  the  day's  teaching, 
in  the  course  of  which  he  would  jot  down  ideas 
that  occurred  to  him,  recording  perhaps  eight 
measures,  and  turning  again  to  the  pupil.  In 
the  evenings,  when  there  were  not  correspond- 
ence-lessons to  write,  or  rehearsals,  he  often  got 
out  his  manuscripts  once  more ;  and  his  short 
summer  vacations  were  given  entirely  to  com- 
position. All  the  more  remarkable  is  this  in- 
domitability  when  we  remember  that  he  lacked 
not  only  the  stimulus  of  public  success,  but  for 
a  long  while  even  the  impetus  of  having  defi- 
nitely succeeded  in  his  own  eyes,  so  new  were 
his  ideas  and  so  difficult  the  technique  they  re- 
quired. Very  few  composers  have  matured  so 
late.  Though  he  wrote  in  his  youth  some  trios, 
and  later  a  Mass,  his  first  really  individual  work, 
"  Ruth,"  was  written  when  he  was  nearly  fifty ; 
"  Les  Eolides,"  his  earliest  orchestral  composi- 
tion, was  produced  in  1 877,  when  he  was  fifty- 
five  ;  "  Les  Beatitudes,"  in  some  respects  his 
masterpiece,  was  not  finished  until  1880,  though 

130 


CESAR        FRANCK 


begun  more  than  ten  years  before  ;  and  all  his 
most  characteristic  work  in  pure  music,  as,  for 
example,  the  Prelude,  Choral,  and  Fugue  and 
the  Prelude,  Aria,  and  Finale  for  piano,  the 
three  wonderful  Chorals  for  organ,  the  Violin 
Sonata,  the  Quartet,  the  Quintet,  and  the  Sym- 
phony, date  from  the  last  decade  of  his  life.  In 
a  day  when  every  harmony-student  itches  to 
give  the  world  a  symphony,  it  is  hard  to  admire 
too  much  the  artistic  self-respect  that  kept 
Franck  a  nonentity  for  years,  to  make  him  at 
last  a  master. 

Meanwhile,  of  course,  he  had  to  endure  neg- 
lect. Probably  most  of  his  acquaintances  shared 
the  impression  put  into  words  by  a  Paris  pub- 
lisher to  whom  M.  Servieres  offered  an  essay 
about  him.  "  Oh,  monsieur,"  cried  this  gentle- 
man, "  I  remember  Cesar  Franck  perfectly.  A 
man  who  was  always  in  a  hurry,  always  soberly 
dressed  in  black,  and  who  wore  his  trousers  too 
short !  .  .  .  Organist  at  Sainte  Clotilde.  It 
seems  that  he  was  a  great  musician,  little  known 
to  the  public."  Rather  harder  to  explain  is  the 
lack  of  appreciation  which  in  1880  led  those  in 
power  at  the  Conservatory,  where  Franck  was 
already  organ  professor,  to  give  the   chair  of 

131 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

composition  then  left  vacant,  not  to  him,  but  to 
Leo  Delibes,  the  writer  of  ballet-music.  But 
perhaps  the  most  pathetic  result  of  the  general 
indifference  to  Franck  was  that  his  masterpiece 
could  never  be  given  a  complete  performance 
during  his  lifetime.  "  Les  Beatitudes  "  was  first 
given  entire  in  1893,  three  years  after  his  death. 
When  he  received  the  Legion  of  Honor  in 
1886,  he  said  sorrowfully  to  a  friend,  "Yes,  my 
friend,  they  honor  me — as  a  Professor."  That 
is  the  one  repining  word  of  his  that  is  recorded. 
It  would,  however,  be  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  Franck's  fellow-men  noticed  nothing  but 
his  short  trousers,  or  that  in  his  high  artistic  ef- 
fort he  was  entirely  without  sympathy.  Few 
men  have  been  more  fortunate  in  their  friends. 
The  love  and  veneration  of  his  many  pupils, 
and  of  such  men  as  Chabrier,  Pierne,  and  Faure, 
made  an  atmospherein  which  his  heart  expanded 
and  his  ambition  grew.  One  of  this  group  of 
admirers  tells  how  they  would  surround  him  on 
his  return  to  Paris  in  the  autumn,  to  ask  what 
he  had  done,  what  he  had  to  show.  "  Vous 
verrez,  repondait-il " — the  French  alone  can 
render  the  endearing  vanity  and  naivete  of  his 
reply — "  vous  verrez,  repondait-il  en  prenant 
132 


CESAR        FRANCK 


un  air  mysterieux,  vous  verrez  ;  je   crois    que 

vous  serez  content J'ai  beaucoup  tra- 

vaille  et  bien  travaille."  It  was  a  similarly 
frank  and  guileless  self-satisfaction  that  made 
him  apparently  unaware  of  the  coldness  of  his 
audiences,  who  were  generally  puzzled  or  bored. 
Happy,  as  M.  d'Indy  records,  in  having  given 
his  friends  the  pleasure  of  hearing  him  play  his 
own  compositions,  in  spite  of  the  scanty  ap- 
plause he  never  failed  to  bow  profoundly.  Thus 
untroubled  by  the  indifference  of  the  crowd, 
surrounded  by  a  few  men  who  gave  him  their 
warm  and  discriminating  admiration,  and  in- 
spired by  a  genius  peculiarly  exalted  and  disin- 
terested, bent  on  beauty  alone,  and  superior  to 
petty  jealousies,  Cesar  Franck  lived  his  quiet, 
fruitful,  and  happy  life.  He  died  at  Paris  in 
1890.  The  last  anecdote  we  have  of  him  tells 
of  his  finding  strength,  four  days  before  his 
death,  to  praise  the  "  Samson  et  Dalila "  of 
Saint-Saens,  then  running  at  the  Theatre  Ly- 
rique.  "  I  see  him  yet,"  says  M.  Arthur  Co- 
quard,  "  turning  towards  me  his  poor  suffering 
face  to  say  vivaciously  and  even  joyfully,  in  the 
vibrant  tones  that  his  friends  know,  *  tres  beau, 
tres  beau.'  "     The  words,  expressing  that  pure 

«33 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

love  of  art  which  animated  his  whole  career, 
lodge  in  the  mind  of  one  who  studies  it,  together 
with  those  other  words  of  his,  which  none  ever 
had  a  better  right  to  use,  "  J'ai  beaucoup  tra- 
vaille  et  bien  travaille." 

It  has  been  necessary  to  dwell  at  some  length 
on  Franck's  life  and  character  because  they 
throw  so  much  light  on  his  music.  To  an  un- 
usual degree  it  is  the  expression  of  himself,  full 
of  his  peculiar  contemplative  emotion.  The 
harmonic  background  is  rich,  somber,  and  vague, 
like  the  prevailing  mood  of  a  religious  devotee; 
from  it  constantly  emerge  phrases  of  song, 
phrases  of  the  most  poignant  aspiration,  like 
passions  in  a  dream,  voicing  those  intense  yet 
elusive  feelings  which  irradiate  none  but  intro- 
spective minds.  They  are  like  the  cries  of  hu- 
man lovers  in  a  world  of  silence  and  mystery, 
or,  better,  they  are  the  cries  of  a  finite  soul  that 
yearns  for  God  and  finds  him  not.  One  feels 
always  in  Franck's  music  the  tragedy  of  the 
finite  and  the  infinite.  Those  groping,  shifting 
harmonies,  above  which  the  pathetic  fragments 
of  melody  constantly  sound  for  a  moment, 
somehow  irresistibly  suggest  the  great  unknown 
universe  in  which  men's  little  lives  are  acted. 

«34 


CESAR        FRANCK 


All  is  vague  save  the  momentary  feature,  and 
that  presses  on  towards  a  fulfillment  that  per- 
petually eludes  it.  All  shifts  and  passes,  save 
only  that  never-ceasing  mood  of  aspiration,  that 
restless  striving  of  the  fragment  for  completion. 
Spiritual  unrest  is  the  characteristic  quality  of 
this  music — the  unrest  of  a  spirit  pure  and 
ardent  but  forever  unsatisfied. 

Now,  it  is  perhaps  not  too  fantastic  to  find  in 
the  mingled  vagueness  and  poignancy  of  this  mu- 
sic the  proper  artistic  expression  of  mysticism. 
So  must  a  mystic  express  himself.  For  it  is 
characteristic  of  the  mystical  temperament  to 
yearn  for  ideal  satisfactions,  but  to  find  none  in 
finite  forms.  Mysticism,  in  fact,  is  one  of  the 
ways  of  solving,  or  perhaps  we  should  say  of 
ignoring,  that  primal  and  protean  mystery  of 
human  life,  the  conflict  between  ideal  needs  and 
actual  facts.  Realism  meets  it  by  denying  the 
needs  and  exalting  the  facts ;  idealism  attempts 
to  mold  the  real  into  conformity  with  the  ideal, 
of  course  with  very  partial  success.  The  mys- 
tic, too  earnest  to  follow  the  realistic  method, 
too  impatient  to  endure  the  plodding  progress 
of  idealism,  cuts  the  Gordian  knot  by  discard- 
ing the  actual  altogether.    He  pronounces  it  too 

135 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

inelastic,  too  constricting,  and  dispenses  with  it. 
He  hugs  the  ideal  to  his  heart,  but  can  see  no 
virtue  in  the  real.  Actualities,  objects,  events, 
and  forms  which  to  the  idealist  are  precious  if 
only  partial  expressions  of  spiritual  values,  are 
to  him  wholly  recalcitrant  wholly  external  and 
illusory.  The  really  precious  thing,  he  says,  is 
something  transcendent,  something  remote, 
something  that  cannot  transpire  in  events  or 
body  itself  in  forms^becauseitis  infinite  and  com- 
plete, while  these  are  finite,  broken,  and  limited. 
Henri-Frederic  Amiel,  a  man  peculiarly  domi- 
nated by  this  way  of  viewing  things,  wrote  in 
his  Journal,  "  Nothing  finite  is  true,  is  interest- 
ing, is  worthy  to  fix  my  attention.  All  that  is 
particular  is  exclusive,  and  all  that  is  exclusive 
repels  me.  There  is  nothing  non-exclusive  but 
the  All  ;  my  end  is  communion  with  Being 
through  the  whole  of  Being."  Now,  whatever 
may  be  the  merits  of  this  point  of  view,  it  ob- 
viously involves  a  certain  degree  of  artistic  fail- 
ure. The  mystic  cannot  be  entirely  successful 
in  art.  For  art  depends  on  organization  in 
definite  forms,  and  the  mystic  rejects  all  partic- 
ular forms  as  finite.  "  Reality,  the  present,  the 
irreparable,  the  necessary,"  writes  Amiel,  "  repel 
136 


CESAR       FRANCK 


and  even  terrify  me.  .  .  .  The  life  of  thought 
alone  seems  to  me  to  have  enough  elasticity 
and  immensity,  to  be  free  enough  from  the  irre- 
parable; practical  life  makes  me  afraid."  Ac- 
cordingly, men  of  this  temperament  are  de- 
feated in  their  search  for  beauty  by  an  uncon- 
querable shyness  of  all  its  incarnations.  They 
fear  that  in  defining  their  fancy  they  will  vul- 
garize it.  It  is  their  fate  to  long  for  an  all-in- 
clusive form  in  a  world  where  forms  are  mutu- 
ally exclusive,  to  strive  to  utter  truth  in  one 
great  word,  when  even  the  shortest  sentence 
must  occupy  time.  Amiel  himself  is  a  pathetic 
example  of  the  mystic's  destiny  in  art.  Haunted 
all  his  life  by  the  vision  of  infinite  beauty,  the 
conception  of  absolute  truth,  he  could  never 
bring  himself  to  accept  the  limitations  of  all 
human  performance,  and  his  talent  was  almost 
as  unproductive  as  it  was  exalted.  He  never 
could  embody  his  aspirations.  Tantalizing  him 
with  the  suggestion  of  supernal  beauties,  they 
resisted  all  his  eflPorts  to  come  up  with  and  em- 
brace them,  because  he  denied  himself  the  use 
of  those  definite  forms  in  which  alone,  how- 
ever inadequately,  ideals  can  be  realized. 

In  many  respects  Cesar  Franck  is  the  ana- 
137 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

logue  in  music  of  Amiel  in  literature.  That 
vague  richness  of  his  emotional  tone,  which 
like  a  dark  background  of  night  is  constantly 
lighted  up  by  meteoric  outbursts  of  passion,  is 
strangely  like  the  somber  moralizings  and  spec- 
ulations, in  the  "Journal  Intime,"  among  which 
Amiel's  cries  of  spiritual  pain,  doubt,  and  long- 
ing stand  out  with  such  sudden,  poignant  pa- 
thos. Franck  has  in  common  with  Amiel  the 
mystic's  longing  for  ideal  satisfactions,  and  the 
mystic's  distrust  of  all  finite  means  of  attaining 
them.  He,  too,  is  "  afraid  "  of  the  forms  of 
practical  life,  of  the  conventional  devices  of  mu- 
sical structure  and  the  types  evolved  by  tradi- 
tion. He  avoids  always  the  obvious,  the  nat- 
ural even,  and  gropes  toward  some  unattainable 
ideal  of  expression.  So  great  is  his  distrust  of 
the  understood,  the  accepted,  the  usual  and  in- 
telligible, that  he  is  always  leaving  the  beaten 
track  and  roaming  afield  after  some  novel  and 
untamed  beauty.  It  will  be  worth  while  to  get 
to  closer  quarters  with  this  tendency,  and  to  see 
exactly  how  it  operates. 

It  is  hard  to  make  those  unacquainted  with 
musical  technique   understand    how    much    of 
fixity  there  is  in  the  musical  idiom,  how  defi- 
138 


CESAR        FRANCK 


nite  are  the  types  of  musical  form,  how  po- 
tent the  requisitions  of  musical  syntax.  Yet, 
without  a  sense  of  this  fixity  in  the  material,  it 
is  impossible  to  estimate  justly  those  impulses 
and  motives  which  may  lead  a  composer  to  vio- 
late usages  and  to  disappoint  expectations.  In 
the  matter  of  harmony,  for  instance,  there  are 
certain  types  of  procedure,  certain  progressions 
and  sequences  of  chords,  that  are  as  stable  and 
uniform  as  the  types  of  animal  or  vegetable 
form.  A  horse,  a  dog,  or  a  man  is  not  a  more 
definite  organism  than  the  two  chords  in  the 
"  Amen "  of  a  hymn  tune.  This  group  or 
cluster  of  two  chords,  linked  together  by  a 
common  tone  held  over  from  one  to  the  other, 
yet  made  distinct  by  progression  of  the  other 
voices,  is  typical  of  a  kind  of  harmonic  form 
that  long  usage  has  established  as  part  of  our 
mental  furniture.  We  are  used  to  thinking  of 
chords  thus  welded  by  a  common  tone,  and  we 
demand  this  sort  of  coherence  in  our  harmonic 
progressions,  just  as  we  demand  that  a  horse's 
body  shall  be  furnished  with  a  horse's  legs,  or 
that  a  transitive  verb  shall  have  an  object.  To 
be  sure,  this  particular  sort  of  cluster,  in  which 
both  chords  are,  as  we  say,  consonant,  is  some- 
139 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

what  less  determinate  than  another  sort  which 
we  shall  describe  presently,  because,  since  all  the 
tones  of  the  first  chord  are  equally  important, 
any  one  may  be  selected  as  the  link,  and  there 
will  be  consequently  some  latitude  in  the  choice 
of  the  second  chord,  which  completes  the  group. 
But  within  these  limits  this  sort  of  harmonic 
type  is  definite  and  fixed,  and  that  it  is  deeply 
ingrained  in  our  mode  of  thought  is  proved  by 
our  horror  of  "  consecutive  octaves "  and 
"  fifths,"  those  bugbears  of  harmony  students, 
which  are  bad  chiefly  because  not  compatible 
with  the  retention  of  a  common  linking  tone 
between  the  two  members  of  the  group. 

Here  we  have,  then,  one  of  those  funda- 
mental harmonic  forms  which  are  in  music  what 
idioms  or  phrases  are  in  language.  It  is  strik- 
ing how  sedulously  Cesar  Franck,  distrustful  of 
the  definite,  the  conventional,  avoids  them. 
Compared  with  the  work  of  a  keen  rationahst 
like  Saint-Sacns,  his  music  is  curiously  inco- 
herent, curiously  loose-knit,  groping,  and  in- 
determinate. His  pages  are  studded  with  de- 
partures and  evasions ;  he  delights  in  going 
some  other  way  than  we  expect,  or  in  writing 
chords  that  do  not  give  us  even  any  basis  of  ex- 
140 


CESAR        FRANCK 


pectation.  Consecutive  octaves  and  fifths,  so 
terrible  to  lovers  of  cogency  and  sequence,  are 
an  especial  feature  of  his  harmony,  giving  it 
that  curious  lapsing  effect  so  characteristic  and 
indescribable.  His  entire  tone-mass  has  a  trick 
of  sliding  bodily  up  or  down,  which  disconcerts, 
even  while  it  fascinates,  one  who  is  accustomed 
to  harmonic  stability.  The  student  need  only 
play  over  the  opening  of  the  Symphony  or  the 
first  page  of  the  String  Quartet  to  feel  that  here 
is  a  man  who  treats  traditions  debonairly,  and 
who  thus  suggests  novel  beauties  without  defin- 
ing them. 

Equally  irresponsible  is  he  in  his  treatment 
of  another  sort  of  harmonic  form  which  is  in- 
trinsically even  more  definite  than  the  clusters 
of  consonant  chords  like  the  "  Amen."  When 
there  is  a  dissonant  tone  in  the  first  chord,  a 
tone  which,  having  slight  justification  for  being, 
presses  urgently  toward  a  neighboring  tone  in 
the  next  chord,  into  which  it  is  said  to  "  re- 
solve," then  the  cluster,  as  a  whole,  is  even 
more  determinate.  The  dissonance  introduces 
a  tension  that  must  be  relieved  in  one  definite 
way.  It  Involves  its  own  resolution  just  as  un- 
stable equilibrium  in  a  body  involves  its  falling 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

in  the  direction  of  the  greatest  pull.  The  alien 
tone  in  the  chord  is  got  rid  of  by  the  path  of 
least  resistance  ;  it  is  a  foreign  element  that 
must  be  discharged.  So  potent  is  this  tendency 
of  dissonant  tones  to  resolve  that  it  is  one  of  the 
chief  means  of  vitalizing  the  entire  musical 
fabric.  Unless  music  constantly  got  out  of 
harmony  with  itself  it  would  no  more  progress 
than  a  man  would  walk  unless  before  each  step 
he  lost  his  balance.  It  would  stagnate.  Con- 
sider, for  example,  the  last  phrase  of  that 
highly  vitalized  tune, "  The  Man  that  Broke  the 
Bank  at  Monte  Carlo."  No  one  could  attribute 
stagnation  to  this  phrase,  whatever  other  faults 
he  might  find  in  it ;  and  its  impetus  is  largely 
due  to  the  vigor  with  which  it  lands  on  the  dis- 
sonant chord  next  before  the  last,  and  the  con- 
sequent pull  of  this  chord  into  the  last.  Try  to 
conceive  of  ending  without  that  last  chord,  that 
resolution  in  which  the  foreign  element  is  dis- 
charged and  all  comes  to  rest.  It  is  told  of 
Mendelssohn  that  he  rushed  down-stairs  in  his 
night  clothes  early  one  morning  to  resolve  a 
dominant  seventh  chord  (such  as  we  have  on 
the  syllable  "  Car  ")  which  some  waggish  friend 
struck  and  left  uncompleted.  Mendelssohn 
142 


CESAR        FRANCK 


was  of  course  unusually  sensitive  to  harmonic 
law,  but  it  is  not  too  much  to  draw  from  this 
incident  the  conclusion  that  a  chord  which  can 
get  a  man  out  of  bed  in  the  morning  to  resolve 
it  must  pretty  potently  suggest  resolution.  Dis- 
sonant chords,  in  fact,  are  anything  but  inert 
elements  in  the  chemistry  of  harmonic  compo- 
sition. They  have  strong  affinities  and  com- 
bine powerfully. 

Yet  Cesar  Franck  is  inclined  either  to  ignore 
these  tendencies  or  to  shift  them  into  unex- 
pected and  circuitous  channels.  The  dissonant 
chords,  though  they  occur  often  in  his  work, 
seldom  take  their  normal  course.  They  are  led 
into  new  dissonances,  diverted  to  alien  keys, 
subjected  to  ingenious  modifications,  and  in  all 
ways  wrested  from  the  realm  of  the  obvious. 
Towards  the  end  of  the  Introduction  to  the 
first  movement  of  the  String  Quartet,  for  in- 
stance, the  student  will  find  dominant  sevenths 
most  interestingly  unfaithful  to  their  family 
tradition,  and  effecting  modulation  through  dis- 
tant keys.  Similar  treatment  will  be  found  on 
almost  any  page  in  this  Quartet,  in  the  Quin- 
tet, the  Symphony,  and  the  piano  works.  Thus, 
Franck  not  only  goes  counter  to  the  less  deter- 

H3 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

minate  harmonic  types  in  which  both  chords 
are  consonant,  but  he  loves  to  disappoint  our 
expectations  when  they  are  strongly  established 
by  dissonances.  Nothing  is  more  characteristic 
of  him  than  the  formal  indefiniteness  of  his  har- 
mony. Full  as  it  is  of  delicious  and  unwonted 
beauties,  it  lacks  accurate  organization,  clarity 
and  solidity  of  chord  sequence.  It  is  a  web  of 
shifting  tones,  without  obvious  interrelationship 
and  inevitable  progression. 

When  we  turn  to  Franck's  treatment  of 
meter  and  rhythm,  we  get  some  new  side-lights 
on  the  way  his  mysticism  affects  his  music.  He 
is,  in  the  first  place,  noticeably  lacking  in  that 
vigor  of  pulse,  that  strong  accentuation,  which 
is  the  delight  of  active  temperaments.  He 
sings  constantly,  almost  never  dances.  After  a 
while  the  intensity  of  the  song-like  phrases,  so 
packed  with  emotion,  becomes  cloying,  and  we 
long  for  a  little  of  the  headlong,  thoughtless 
progress  of  Grieg  and  Dvorak.  We  need  the 
relaxation  of  muscular  activity.  It  would  be  a 
relief  to  stop  feeling  for  a  moment  and  be 
borne  along  on  a  wave  of  perfectly  unemotional 
"  passage-work."  But  Franck  never  relieves 
himself  and  his   hearer  by  passages   of  brisk 

»44 


CESAR        FRANCK 


motion  in  which  the  interest  is  entirely  active  ; 
he  is,  so  to  speak,  a  very  sedentary  composer. 
And  so  the  rare  beauties  that  stud  the  page  lose 
something  by  being  set  so  thickly.  The  richness 
of  Franck's  emotional  impulse  is  a  disadvantage 
to  his  metrical  structure.  The  same  thing, 
again,  is  true  of  his  rhythm  or  phraseology.  We 
saw  in  the  Introduction  how  elementary  metric- 
al groups — measures — were  built  up  into  phrases 
and  tunes,  and  how  the  strongest  synthetic 
minds  got  the  greatest  variety  and  breadth  of 
phrase.  Now  Franck's  phrasing,  like  Grieg's, 
is  of  the  primitive  kind  that  reveals  lack  of 
mental  concentration,  inability  to  build  up  wide 
and  complex  forms.  Draw  a  line  across  his 
staff  at  every  breathing-point,  and  your  lines 
will  fall  pretty  regularly  after  the  measures 
whose  numbers  are  multiples  of  four.  Try  the 
same  thing  with  Beethoven,  and  there  will  be 
no  telling  where  the  lines  will  come,  so  varied 
is  the  phraseology.  In  comparison,  Franck's 
themes  seem  hardly  more  than  bundles  of 
motifs,  loosely  tied  together.  And  of  course  this 
effect  is  unfortunately  reinforced  by  the  peculi- 
arities of  his  harmony.  How  could  a  theme 
hold  itself  together  in  such  a   kaleidoscope  ? 

»4S 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

How  could  it  sustain  itself  on  such  a  tonal 
quicksand  ?  Thus  his  tunes,  rich  as  they  are 
in  single  phrases  of  poignant  beauty,  seldom 
develop  much  breadth.  They  start  out  well, 
but  soon  lose  themselves  in  the  web  or  fall  into 
poorly  welded  segments.  In  the  larger  struc- 
tural arrangement  of  his  material  as  well  as  in 
his  primary  metrical  order  he  falls  short  of  the 
perfect  organization  of  more  powerful  minds. 
Franck  illustrates,  then,  in  many  ways,  in  his 
erratic  treatment  of  harmony,  in  his  metrical 
monotony,  and  in  his  "  shortness  of  breath," 
the  mystic's  failure  to  master  form.  And  yet, 
so  beautiful  are  his  effects,  so  arresting  is  his 
personality,  one  feels  instinctively  that  there  is 
in  him  something  which  destructive  criticism 
cannot  assail.  The  very  inarticulateness  of  the 
mystic  is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of  eloquence,  perhaps 
all  the  more  persuasive  because  it  hints  at 
beauties  rather  than  defines  them.  However 
beyond  his  reach  his  aspirations  may  be,  so 
long  as  they  are  genuine  and  ardent  he  will 
have  his  unique  artistic  message.  His  work 
will  gain  a  pathetic  appeal  from  the  very  fact 
that  it  suggests  feelings  it  cannot  embody,  and 
his  inarticulateness  may  even  open  up  ways  to 
146 


CESAR        FRANCK 


new  modes  of  utterance  by  reminding  men  that 
there  are  truths  other  than  those  their  formulas 
so  smugly  stereotype.  Thus  a  writer  like 
Amiel,  ineffective  as  he  seems  from  one  point 
of  view,  is  not  without  his  liberalizing  influence 
in  literature.  In  the  same  way,  Cesar  Franck, 
the  mystic  among  musicians,  thanks  to  his  pro- 
found insight  and  emotion,  combined  though 
they  be  with  the  characteristic  shortcomings  of 
the  seer,  will  widen  the  scope  of  future  musical 
technique  and  expression. 

Bibliographical  Note. — The  Prelude,  Choral,  and  Fugue 
for  Piano  are  to  be  had  in  the  Collection  LitolfF.  The  Prelude, 
Aria,  and  Finale  are  published  by  J.  Hamelle,  Paris.  These  are 
the  only  piano  pieces  of  Franck  that  are  easily  obtainable.  The 
house  of  Hamelle  also  issues  a  four-hand  arrangement  of  the  Sym- 
phony, and  Durand,  of  Paris,  publishes  a  four-hand  arrangement 
of  the  three  masterly  Chorals  for  organ,  as  well  as  the  original 
edition  of  these,  and  of  two  sets  of  organ  pieces,  one  of  six  and 
the  other  of  three.  The  "  Beatitudes  "  has  been  reprinted,  with 
English  words,  by  G.  Schirmer.  A  few  of  Franck' s  songs,  par- 
ticularly *' La  Procession,"  "Panis  Angelicus,"  and  "  Le 
Mariage  des  Roses,"  will  be  found  in  the  portfolios  of  most 
large  music  dealers. 


VI 
PETER    ILYITCH 
TSC  H  Ai  KOWS  KY 


PETER    ILYITCH    TSCHAIKOWSK.Y 


VI 
PETER    ILYITCH 
TSCHAJfKOWSKY 


'i' 


NE  of  the  constant  temptations 
of  the  biographer  is  that  of 
seizing  on  some  salient  trait  in 
his  subject, magnifying  it  beyond 
all  relation  to  others  which  sup- 
plement or  modify  it,  and  portraying  an  eccen- 
tric rather  than  a  rounded  personality,  a  mon- 
ster rather  than  a  man.  Human  nature  is  com- 
plex, many-sided,  even  self-contradictory  to  any 
but  the  most  penetrative  view  ;  and  so  slender 
are  the  resources  of  literature  for  dealing  with 
such  a  paradox  as  a  man,  that  writers,  resorting 
to  simplification,  sacrifice  fullness  to  intelligi- 
bility. In  books  Napoleon  is  apt  to  be  denied 
all  scruples,  Keats  all  virility,  Marcus  Aurelius 
all  engaging  folly ;  the  real  men  were  probably 
not  so  simple.     It  is  certain,  at  any  rate,  that 

«5« 


FROM       GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

Tschaikowsky,  the  greatest  of  Russian  musi- 
cians, one  of  the  two  greatest  of  all  composers 
since  Wagner,  cannot  have  been  the  mere  in- 
carnation of  concentrated  gloom  that  his  critics 
have  drawn.  Some  worthier  powers  than  that 
of  eloquent  lamenting  must  have  contributed  to 
mold  him.  He  was  not  simply  a  sort  of  neuras- 
thenic Jeremiah  with  a  faculty  for  orchestra- 
tion. 

It  is  only  too  easy  and  plausible,  to  be  sure, 
to  label  him  with  one  of  those  insidiously 
blighting  epithets,  "  neurasthenic,"  "  decadent," 
or  "  morbid."  He  was,  in  fact,  of  an  unfortu- 
nate heredity  ;  his  grandfather  was  epileptic, 
and  his  own  symptoms  pointed  to  an  inherited 
nervous  irritability.  He  was  troubled  more  or 
less,  all  his  life,  by  sleeplessness,  fatigue,  de- 
pression ;  and  in  his  thirty-seventh  year  had  a 
complete  nervous  collapse.  But  to  discredit  a 
man's  insight  by  pointing  out  his  physical  mis- 
fortunes is  as  misleading  as  it  is  unkind.  The 
fact  that  Schopenhauer,  with  whose  tempera- 
ment Tschaikowsky's  had  much  in  common, 
had  some  insane  and  idiotic  ancestors,  and  suf- 
fered much  from  his  own  unusual  sensitive- 
ness, does  not  in  the  least  abate  the  truth  of 

1S^ 


PETER   ILYITCH   TSCHAIKOWSKY 

his  philosophic  teaching,  though  it  may  call  at- 
tention to  its  one-sidedness.  And  so  with  the 
musician ;  knowledge  of  his  personal  twist 
ought  not  to  make  us  deaf  to  whatever  is  uni- 
versal in  his  utterance.  We  may  remember 
that  he  reports  but  one  aspect  of  the  truth  ; 
but  if  he  reports  that  truly,  we  may  supply 
the  other,  and  need  not  carp  at  the  way  he  got 
his  information.  And  indeed  is  it  not,  after 
all,  an  artificial  circumscription  of  life  to  ignore 
its  sadder  verities,  however  moral  Pharisees 
may  stigmatize  the  perception  of  them  as  "  mor- 
bid "  ?  Has  not  disease,  as  well  as  health,  its 
relation  to  our  fortunes  ?  Is  not  man's  weakness 
an  organic  part  of  his  strength,  his  fear  of  his 
courage,  his  doubt  of  his  faith  ?  That  mere 
facile  optimism  which  smiles  blandly  at  all  ex- 
perience, with  unseeing  eyes,  is  as  partial  and 
false  as  the  unrelieved  pessimism  into  which  the 
contemplation  of  it  sometimes  drives  the  sensi- 
tive. The  world  is  no  more  all  light  than  it  is 
all  shadow.  All  human  Hfe,  with  its  suffering 
as  well  as  its  happiness,  is  one,  and  every  sincere 
human  experience  has  its  own  weight.  And  so 
Tschaiko  wsky ,  in  spite  of  grandfathers  and  symp- 
toms, has  a  right  to  be  respectfully  heard. 

»S3 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

The  tendency  to  depreciate  men  like  Tschai- 
kowsky  and  Schopenhauer  generally  rests  on  a 
confusion  between  what  may  be  called  senti- 
mental and  rational  pessimism.  The  sentimental 
pessimist,  the  weak  malcontent,  who  sees  every- 
thing through  the  blue  spectacles  of  egotism,  or, 
like  the  cuttlefish,  muddies  his  world  with  a  black 
humor  of  his  own,  deserves  indeed  nothing  bet- 
ter than  a  shrug.  Like  all  other  forms  of  senti- 
mentahty,  his  pessimism  is  based  on  selfishness. 
It  is  an  emanation,  not  an  insight.  It  is  that 
form  of  colic,  to  use  the  figure  of  Thoreau, 
which  makes  him  discover  that  the  world  has 
been  eating  green  apples.  Quite  different  from 
such  a  sentimentalist,  however,  is  the  sensitive 
man  who  feels  impersonally  the  real  evils  of  life. 
Such  a  man's  experience  is  viewed  by  him,  not 
as  the  end,  but  as  the  means,  of  insight. 
His  own  pains,  however  keen,  appear  to 
him  but  as  symbols  of  the  universal  suf- 
fering of  humanity,  and  however  much  his  view 
may  be  subjectively  jaundiced,  it  does  not  term- 
inate in,  but  only  begins  with,  the  petty  self. 
He  is  not  a  devotee  of  the  luxury  of  woe.  "  A 
very  noble  character,"  says  Schopenhauer,  "  we 
always  conceive  with  a  certain  tinge  of  melan- 

154 


PETER      ILYITCH      TSCHAIKOWSKY 

choly  in  it — a  melancholy  that  is  anything  but 
a  continual  peevishness  in  view  of  the  daily  vex- 
ations of  life  (for  such  peevishness  is  an  ignoble 
trait,  and  arouses  suspicions  of  maliciousness), 
but  rather  a  melancholy  that  comes  from  an  in- 
sight into  the  vanity  of  all  joys,  and  the  sorrow- 
fulness of  all  living,  not  alone  of  one's  own  for- 
tune." And  Tschaikowsky,  in  describing 
Beethoven's  Choral  Symphony,  writes,  one  can 
see,  from  precisely  the  same  standpoint :  "  Such 
joy  is  not  of  this  earth.  It  is  something  ideal 
and  unrealizable ;  it  has  nothing  in  common 
with  this  life,  but  is  only  a  momentary  aspiration 
of  humanity  towards  the  holiness  which  exists 
only  in  the  world  of  art  and.  beauty  ;  afterwards, 
this  vale  of  earth,  with  its  endless  sorrow,  its 
agony  of  doubt  and  unsatisfied  hopes,  seems  still 
more  gloomy  and  without  issue.  In  the  Ninth 
Symphony  we  hear  the  despairing  cry  of  a  great 
genius  who,  having  irrevocably  lost  faith  in  hap- 
piness, escapes  for  a  time  into  the  world  of  un- 
realizable hopes,  into  the  realm  of  broken- 
winged  ideals."  Now  undoubtedly  these 
passages,  especially  the  latter,  are  guilty  of  false 
emphasis  ;  undoubtedly  one  can  truly  reply  to 
Tschaikowsky  that  the  ideal  is  necessarily  fairer 

I5S 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

than  reality,  as  the  flower  is  fairer  than  the  soil 
from  which  it  springs,  that  "  this  vale  of  earth"  is 
not  "  without  issue,"  however  gloomy,  since  it 
does  in  fact  produce  the  ideal  world  of  art  and 
beauty,  and  that  it  is  precisely  the  glory  of  hopes 
that  they  are  unrealizable,  and  of  happiness  that 
it  exists  only  on  a  level  higher  than  that  of  finite 
life.  But,  however  one-sided  may  be  the  opin- 
ions expressed,  the  attitude  of  mind  is  free  from 
the  taint  of  petty  selfishness  ;  it  is  frank,  open- 
eyed,  and  manly.  Such  utterances  proceed  only 
from  natures  nobly  human,  however  burdened 
with  a  greater  sensibility  than  is  common  among 
men. 

Of  the  extraordinary  sensibility  of  Tscha'i- 
kowsky,  his  emotional  intensity  and  impetuosity, 
which,  discerning  truly,  critics  have  so  often 
falsely  interpreted,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  He 
was  the  subject  and  in  some  ways  the  victim,  of 
hereditary  instability,  a  tendency,  so  to  speak, 
to  go  oflfat  half-cock.  In  his  life  no  trait  comes 
out  more  conspicuously,  and  its  association 
with  his  powerful  intellect,  with  which  it  was 
always  at  odds,  goes  far  to  explain  the  anomalies 
and  paradoxes  of  his  music.  We  see  it  con- 
stantly in  his  acts,  where,  if  we  always  remember 
156 


PETER      ILYITCH      TSCHAIKOWSKY 

that  we  are  studying  a  great  nature,  which  must 
be  analyzed  respectfully  and  without  vulgar 
curiosity,  we  may  learn  much  from  observing  it. 
Peter  Ilyitch  Tschaikowsky  was  born  in  a 
small  Russian  town  in  1 840.  As  a  very  small 
boy  he  showed  his  ardent  patriotism  by  kissing 
the  map  of  Russia,  in  his  Atlas,  and  spitting  at 
the  rest  of  Europe.  When  his  French  nurse 
remonstrated,  he  explained  that  he  had  been 
careful  to  cover  France  with  his  hand.  There 
already  is  his  temperament — passionate  and 
tender.  The  Tschaikowsky  family  early  moved 
to  St.  Petersburg,  where  Peter  at  first  entered 
the  School  of  Jurisprudence,  and  later  obtained 
a  post  in  the  Ministry  of  Justice.  All  through 
his  youth  he  was  indolent,  popular,  fond  of 
society,  a  graceful  amateur  who  played  salon 
pieces  at  evening  parties.  That  his  serious  in- 
terest in  music  was  first  aroused  by  his  cousin's 
showing  him  how  to  "  modulate "  is  rather 
amusing  when  we  remember  the  virtuosity  and 
daring  of  his  mature  harmonic  style.  "My 
cousin  said  it  was  possible  to  modulate  from 
one  key  to  another,"  he  says,  "  without  using 
more  than  three  chords.  This  excited  my  curi- 
osity, and  to   my  astonishment  I  found  that  he 

157 


FROM        GRIEG        TO        BRAHMS 

improvised  whatever  modulations  I  suggested, 
even  from  quite  extraneous  keys."  In  1861  he 
wrote  to  his  sister  that  he  was  meditating  a 
musical  career,  but  was  still  in  doubt  whether 
he  could  pursue  it  successfully.  "  Perhaps 
idleness  may  take  possession  of  me,  and  I  may 
not  persevere."  But  a  little  later  all  doubts  had 
vanished,  he  had  given  up  his  official  work, 
withdrawn  from  society,  and  thrown  himself 
with  characteristic  ardor  into  his  studies.  He 
now  sometimes  sat  up  all  night  working,  and 
Rubinstein,  his  composition  teacher  at  the  Con- 
servatory, tells  how  on  one  occasion  he  submit- 
ted no  less  than  two  hundred  variations  on  a 
single  theme.  He  made  such  good  progress 
that  in  1866,  a  few  years  after  his  graduation, 
he  was  appointed  professor  of  harmony  in  the 
Moscow  Conservatory. 

From  about  this  time  date  his  first  important 
compositions.  "  When  first  he  came  to  live  in 
Moscow,"  writes  his  friend  M.  Kashkin,  "  al- 
though he  was  then  six-and-twenty,  he  was  still 
inexperienced  and  young  in  many  things,  espe- 
cially in  the  material  questions  of  life ;  but  in 
all  that  concerned  his  work  he  was  already  ma- 
ture, with  a  particularly  elaborate    method    of 

158 


PETER      ILYITCH      TSCHAIKOWSKY 

work,  in  which  all  was  foreseen  with  admirable 
judgment,  and  manipulated  with  the  exactitude 
of  the  surgeon  in  operating."  M.  Kashkin's 
testimony  is  a  valuable  corrective  to  the  wide- 
spread impression  that  Tschaikowsky  composed 
in  a  mad  frenzy  of  passion.  No  good  work, 
in  art  any  more  than  in  science,  is  done  without 
that  calm  deliberation  which  his  strong  mental 
grasp  made  possible  to  him.  His  early  com- 
positions were  for  the  most  part  operas,  and,  it 
must  be  added,  unsuccessful  operas.  "  The 
Voievoda,"  v/ritten  in  1 866,  did  not  satisfy  him, 
and  he  burned  the  score.  "  Undine,"  composed 
in  1870,  was  not  accepted  by  the  theatrical  au- 
thorities, who  moreover  mislaid  the  manu- 
script ;  Tschaikowsky,  years  later,  recovered 
and  destroyed  it.  In  1873  "  Snegourotchka," 
a  ballet,  in  spite  of  some  musical  beauty,  failed 
for  lack  of  dramatic  interest.  The  success  of 
"  Kouznetz  Vakoula,"  produced  a  year  later, 
was  ephemeral.  Thus  it  was  not  until  "  The 
Oprichnik,"  which  still  holds  the  stage  in  Rus- 
sia, was  brought  out,  when  Tschaikowsky  was 
thirty-four,  that  he  made  a  pronounced  success. 
The  persistence  with  which  he  continued  to 
labor  during  these  years  seems  to  be  overlooked 

»S9 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

by  those  who  consider  him  a  mere  prophet  of 
lassitude  and  discouragement.  Nor  would 
such  a  man  have  undertaken  and  discharged 
the  drudgery  of  journalistic  criticism  as  did 
Tschaikowsky  in  the  four  years  from  1872  to 
1876,  when  he  was  writing  critiques  for  the 
Moscow  papers.  Whatever  fluctuations  of 
mood  he  may  have  undergone  in  these  early 
years,  and  we  may  be  sure  they  were  many,  his 
outward  life  was  an  example  of  equability,  dili- 
gence and  patience. 

In  1877,  however,  there  was  some  sort  of 
tragic  happening.  That  it  was  somehow  con- 
nected with  an  unhappy  marriage,  that  it  re- 
sulted in  a  complete  nervous  breakdown,  these 
things  we  know.*  It  is  unnecessary  to  probe 
for  more  specific  details ;  it  is  enough  to  note 
that  for  a  long  time  he  was  broken  and  despair- 
ing, that   through  all  the  rest  of  his  life  his 

*  Since  the  present  paper  was  written,  the  biography  of 
Tschaikowsky  by  his  brother  has  shown  that  in  this  unhappy 
marriage  the  only  fault  we  can  attribute  to  the  composer  was  a 
quixotic  chivalry  in  marrying  a  young  woman  who  had  declared 
her  love  for  him.  He  married  her  from  sympathy  without  lov- 
ing her.  Of  course  such  a  step  could  lead  to  nothing  but  mis- 
ery ;  but  however  unwise,  it  was  at  least  generous  and  hon- 
orable. 

z6o 


PETER      ILYITCH      TSCHAIKOWSKY 

mental  temper,  never  bright,  was  shadowed 
with  a  pathological  gloom.  He  left  the  Con- 
servatory suddenly,  and  was  abroad  a  year. 
He  wrote  one  of  his  friends,  "  On  the  whole, 
I  am  robust ;  but  as  regards  my  soul,  there  is 
a  wound  there  that  will  never  heal.  I  think  I 
am  bomme  Jini.  .  .  .  Something  is  broken  in 
me ;  my  wings  are  cut  and  I  shall  never  fly 
very  high  again."  He  says  that  had  he  re- 
mained a  day  longer  in  Moscow  he  should 
have  drowned  himself,  and  it  is  said  that  he  did 
go  so  far,  in  his  terrible  depression,  as  to  stand 
up  to  his  chest  in  the  river  one  frosty  Septem- 
ber night,  "  in  the  hope  of  literally  catching  his 
death  of  cold,  and  getting  rid  of  his  troubles 
without  scandal." 

But  he  took  the  better  way  ;  indeed,  the  best 
years,  the  quietest  and  most  fruitful  years,  of 
his  life  were  yet  before  him.  As  robust  in  char- 
acter as  he  was  sensitive  and  impetuous  in  tem- 
perament, he  pulled  himself  together,  and  wrote 
in  the  next  year  his  masterly  Fourth  Symphony, 
his  best  opera,  "  Eugene  Oniegin,"  said  to  be 
the  second  most  popular  opera  in  Russia,  and 
many  other  strong  works.  He  returned  also, 
in  the  fall  of  1878,  to  his  post  at  the  Conserva- 

z6i 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

tory,  but,  by  the  generosity  of  an  anonymous 
lady,*  was  soon  enabled  to  give  up  teaching  and 
devote  himself  entirely  to  composition.  From 
this  time  on,  except  for  a  conducting  tour 
through  western  Europe  in  1888,  and  one  to 
America  a  few  years  later,  he  stayed  chiefly  In 
the  country,  in  studious  solitude.  His  mode  of 
life  at  Maidanova,  a  little  village  where  in  1885 
he  took  a  house,  has  been  described  by  M. 
Kashkin,  who  often  visited  him.  After  work- 
ing all  the  morning,  and  taking  a  simple  but 
well-cooked  dinner,  Tschaikowsky  always  went 
for  a  long  walk,  no  matter  what  the  weather. 
"  Many  of  his  works  were  planned  and  his 
themes  invented,"  we  are  told,  "  in  these  long 
rambles  across  country."  After  tea  he  worked 
again  until  supper-time,  and  after  supper  the 
two  friends,  ordering  a  bottle  of  wine  and  dis- 
missing the  servant,  would  devote  themselves  to 
playing  four-hand  music.  M.  Kashkin  tells 
one  or  two  interesting  stories  of  Tschaikowsky 
at  this  period.     His  impulsiveness,  it  seems, 

*  This  lady,  according  to  the  new  biography,  was  Frau  von 
Meek,  the  widow  of  a  wealthy  railway  engineer.  Her  interest 
in  Tschaikowsky''  s  work,  and  her  generous  gifts  of  money,  were 
of  great  value  to  him  all  his  life. 

i6z 


PETER      ILYITCH      TSCHAIKOWSKY 

took  the  form  in  money  matters  of  a  fairly  reck- 
less generosity.  So  lavishly  did  he  shower  cop- 
pers on  all  the  peasant  children  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, that  he  could  not  go  for  his  walk 
without  being  surrounded  by  them.  In  one 
afternoon  he  is  said  to  have  dispensed  fourteen 
shillings  of  his  own  and  all  of  M.  Kashkin's 
small  change.  A  friend  once  asked  him  where 
he  "  invested  his  capital."  Convulsed  with 
laughter,  he  answered  that  his  last  investment  of 
capital  had  been  in  a  Moscow  hotel,  and  that 
where  his  next  would  be  he  did  not  know. 

The  events  of  his  tour  in  1888  he  has  him- 
self narrated  with  characteristic  modesty  and 
charm,  in  a  fragment  of  diary.  One  can  read 
between  the  lines  that  he  was  everywhere  the 
center  of  admiring  interest,  but  with  fine  lite- 
rary instinct  he  constantly  subordinates  himself 
to  the  people  and  events  through  which  he 
moved.  How  lovable  are  his  vainly  continued 
efforts  to  enjoy  the  music  of  Brahms,  his  eager- 
ness to  record  the  little  kindnesses  of  his 
friends,  his  dignified  reticence  about  his  ene- 
mies, his  hearty  appreciation  of  work  far  infe- 
rior to  his  own  !  "  I  trust,"  he  says,  "  that  it 
will  not  appear  like  self-glorification  that  my 
163 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

dithyramb  in  praise  of  Grieg  precedes  the  state- 
ment that  our  natures  are  closely  allied.  Speak- 
ing of  Grieg's  high  qualities,  I  do  not  at  all 
wish  to  impress  my  readers  with  the  notion 
that  I  am  endowed  with  an  equal  share  ofthem. 
I  leave  it  to  others  to  decide  how  far  I  am 
lacking  in  all  that  Grieg  possesses  in  such 
abundance."  This  warm  appreciation  of  oth- 
ers, combined  with  so  pathetic  a  lack  of  self- 
confidence  that  on  more  than  one  occasion  he 
burned  the  score  of  a  work  which  was  coldly 
received,  was  so  extreme  in  Tschaikowsky 
that  one  of  his  friends  pronounced  him  the 
least  conceited  of  composers.  Like  all  sensi- 
tive people,  indeed,  he  was  painfully  conscious 
of  social  bonds  ;  what  was  due  him  from  oth- 
ers, and  what  in  turn  was  due  them  from  him 
— these  intangibles,  so  easily  forgotten  by  most 
men,  were  to  him  heavy  realities.  It  is  touch- 
ing to  see  how  dependent  he  was  on  the  friend- 
liness of  the  orchestra  he  was  leading,  and  he 
was  so  impressible  by  criticism  that  long  after 
his  fame  was  established  he  could  repeat  word 
for  word  Hanslick's  and  Cui's  early  attacks 
upon  him.  On  the  other  hand,  M.  Kashkin  says 
that  when  he  was  conducting  the  works  of  others 

164 


PETER      ILYITCH      TSCHAIKOWSKY 

he  was  so  sensible  of  his  responsibiHty  that  his 
face  wore  a  look  of  physical  pain.  When  he 
was  dying  of  cholera,  in  terrible  agony,  he 
thanked  all  about  his  bedside  for  the  consider- 
ation they  showed  him,  and  his  last  remark  re- 
minds one  of  Charles  the  Second's  "I  am  afraid, 
gentlemen,  I  am  an  unconscionable  time  a-dy- 
ing."  He  turned  to  his  nephews  after  an  un- 
usually severe  attack  of  nausea  with  the  excla- 
mation, "  What  a  state  I  am  in  !  You  will 
have  but  little  respect  for  your  uncle  when  you 
think  of  him  in  such  a  state  as  this  ! "  He 
died  at  St.  Petersburg,  in  October,  1893. 

By  this  time  it  will  be  clear  enough  that  this 
was  no  puling  complainer,  but  a  delicate,  high 
nature  of  great  emotional  intensity,  subjected 
to  a  cruel  interaction  of  temperament  and  cir- 
cumstances, and  yet  capable  of  nobly  construct- 
ive artistic  work.  His  life,  candidly  examined, 
reveals  modesty,  dignity,  elevation  of  ideal  and 
of  character.  Yet  it  does  illustrate,  too,  in 
many  ways,  that  lack  of  emotional  balance 
which  underlies  the  peculiar  quality  of  his 
music. 

His  mere  method  of  approaching  his  art,  in 
the  first  place,  is  significant..    All  his  early  cf- 

i6s 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

forts,  as  we  have  seen,  were  operas ;  he  wrote 
altogether  ten  operas,  and  the  Pathetic  Sym- 
phony is  the  last  fruit  of  a  genius  dramatic 
rather  than  symphonic.  At  thirty  Tschaikow- 
sky  was  unable  to  read  orchestral  scores  with 
ease,  and  preferred  to  study  the  classics  through 
four-hand  arrangements,  while  his  distaste  for 
the  purest  form  of  music  was  so  great  that  he 
protested  he  could  hardly  keep  awake  through 
the  performance  of  the  masterly  A-minor  Quar- 
tet of  Beethoven.  This  attitude  toward  the 
string  quartet,  which  is  in  music  what  engraving 
or  etching  is  in  representative  art,  is  very  anom- 
alous in  a  young  composer,  and  shows  so  dis- 
proportionate an  interest  in  the  merely  expres- 
sive side  of  music  that  it  is  hard  to  understand 
how  Tschaikowsky  ever  became  so  great  a 
plastic  master  as  his  last  two  symphonies,  for 
all  their  freight  of  passion,  show  him  to  be. 

He  never,  in  fact,  wholly  outgrew  certain  pe- 
culiarities which  are  direct  results  of  his  emo- 
tional instability,  his  slavery  to  mood.  His 
persistent  use  of  minor  keys,  for  example,  is,  as 
the  doctors  say,  symptomatic.  The  minor  is 
naturally  the  medium  of  vague,  subjective 
moods  and  fantasies,  of  aspiration,  longing,  and 

i66 


PETER   ILYITCH   TSCHAIKOWSKY 

doubt ;  it  is  the  vehicle  of  morbidly  self- 
bounded  thoughts,  whose  depressing  gloom  is 
equalled  only  by  their  seductive  and  malign 
beauty.  Such  thoughts  we  find  too  often  in 
Chopin,  Grieg,  and,  it  must  be  added,  in 
Tschaikowsky.  Of  the  first  thirty  songs  he 
wrote,  seventeen  are  in  the  minor  mode.  Of 
course  too  much  should  not  be  argued  from  a 
detail  of  this  sort,  but  the  major  system  is  so 
naturally  the  medium  of  vigorously  objective 
thought  that  wc  instinctively  suspect  the  health  of 
a  mind  which  harps  continually  upon  the  minor. 
By  a  somewhat  similar  tendency  towards  self- 
involution,  the  natural  result  of  intense  emo- 
tionality, Tschaikowsky  inclines  to  monotony 
of  rhythm ;  he  gets  hypnotized,  as  it  were,  by 
the  regular  pulsation  of  some  recurring  meter, 
and  he  continues  it  to  the  verge  of  trance.  An 
example  is  the  long  pedal-point  on  D,  in  the 
curious  5-4  measure  of  the  second  movement  of 
the  Pathetic  Symphony.  This  is  like  the  wailing 
and  rocking  of  the  women  of  a  savage  tribe  over 
the  death  of  a  warrior ;  it  is  at  once  wild  and 
sinister.  But  perhaps  the  most  striking  evi- 
dence of  this  servitude  to  passion  we  are  trying 
to  trace  in  Tschaikowsky  is  his  constant  use  of 
167 


FROM        GRIEG        TO        BRAHMS 

climax.  It  seems  to  be  quite  impossible  for 
him  to  preserve  a  mean-tone  ;  he  is  always  lash- 
ing himself  into  a  fury,  boiling  up  into  a  frenetic 
fortissimo,  after  which  he  lapses  into  coma  until 
some  phrase  of  melody  or  impulse  of  rhythm 
jostles  his  imagination  again,  and  he  presses  on 
toward  a  new  crisis.  The  effect  of  these  cumu- 
lative whirlwinds  of  passion  is  often  tremen- 
dous, is  unique,  indeed,  in  music ;  yet  one 
longs  sometimes  in  the  midst  of  them  for  a  less 
turbulent  attitude,  for  the  equable  beauty  of 
Bach  or  Mozart.  The  atmosphere  is  sur- 
charged. One  feels  that  this  noble  but  willful 
spirit  has  sat  too  long  in  the  close  chamber  of 
personal  feeling,  that  one  must  throw  wide  the 
windows  and  let  in  the  fresh  winds  of  general 
human  existence. 

Yet,  after  all,  the  imperfections  of  Tschai'- 
kowsky's  music  are  due  rather  to  the  over- 
whelming  richness  of  his  emotions  than  to  any 
shortcomings  of  mind ;  his  case  is  an  artistic 
embarrassment  of  riches,  and  his  critic  must 
avoid  the  fallacy  of  supposing,  because  his  con- 
structive power  is  sometimes  inadequate,  that  it 
is  ever  meager.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  a  man 
of  great  intellectual  force.     It  is  too  bad  to  be 

i68 


PETER      ILYITCH      TSCHAIKOWSKY 

SO  busy  with  Tschaikowsky  the  pessimist  that 
one  forgets  Tschaikowsky  the  artist  His  me- 
lodic fertility  alone  is  enough  to  rank  him  with 
the  great  constructive  musicians.  His  devotion 
to  Mozart,  and  to  the  Italian  opera-writers, 
was  no  accident  ;  by  the  spontaneity  and  beauty 
of  his  melodies  he  has  "approved  himself  their 
worthy  brother."  Few  more  inspiring  tunes 
can  be  found  anywhere  than  the  opening  theme 
of  his  B-flat  minor  Piano  Concerto,  with  its 
splendid  and  tireless  vigor,  or  the  broad,  con- 
stantly unfolding  cantilena  of  the  second  theme 
in  the  Fifth  Symphony.  His  pages  are  plenti- 
fully scattered  with  phrases  of  rare  grace,  of  a 
fresh  and  original  charm.  His  harmony,  too, 
for  all  its  radicalism,  is  generally  firm  and  well 
controlled,  and  his  rhythm,  however  monoton- 
ous at  times,  is  never  vague.  In  polyphony 
(the  simultaneous  progress  of  different  melo- 
dies) he  is  a  powerful  master,  as  any  one  may 
see  by  examining,  for  example,  the  masterly 
variations  in  his  Orchestral  Suite,  opus  ^^. 
He  is  probably,  on  the  whole,  a  greater  master 
of  general  construction  than  any  of  his  contem- 
poraries except  Brahms. 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  this  curiously  para- 
169 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

doxical  personality  was  gifted  with  an  intellec- 
tual strength  that  went  far  toward  dominating 
the  turbulent  passions  which,  on  the  whole,  it 
could  not  quite  dominate.  But  one  needs,  after 
all,  no  careful  statistical  proof  of  the  rationality 
of  Tschaikowsky's  music.  The  fact  that  it 
survives,  that  it  is  widely  listened  to  and  loved, 
proves  a  priori  that,  however  tinged  it  may  be 
with  personal  melancholy,  it  is  not  ultimately 
pessimistical  or  destructive  in  effect.  For  it  is 
the  happy  fortune  of  art  that  it  cannot  fully 
voice  the  destructive  forces  of  anarchy  and  des- 
pair. Its  nature  precludes  the  possibility,  for 
anarchy  is  chaos,  despair  is  confusion,  and  neither 
can  be  the  subject  of  that  clearly  organic  order 
which  is  art.  The  artist  may,  of  course,  express 
sadness  ;  his  work,  if  it  is  to  be  comprehensively 
human,  must  be  reflective  of  the  ebb  as  well  as 
the  flow  of  vital  power.  But  it  cannot  mirror 
complete  dejection,  the  absolute  lapse  of  power  ; 
foi  without  power  there  is  no  organization,  and 
without  organization  there  is  no  art.  The  me- 
lodic invention,  the  harmonic  grasp,  the  rhyth- 
mic vigor,  in  a  word  the  powerful  musical  arti- 
culation, everywhere  present  in  Tschaikowsky's 
best  work,  remove  it  far  from  the  inarticulate 
170 


PETER      ILYITCH      TSCHAIKOWSKY 

moanings  of  despair.  Such  faculties  as  his  are 
anything  but  disintegrating  or  decadent ;  how- 
ever much  individual  sadness  may  attend  their 
exercise,  they  are  upbuilding  and  creative. 
Tscha'ikowsky  commands  our  admiration  more 
than  our  pity  because,  in  spite  of  the  burdens  of 
his  temperament  and  the  misfortunes  of  his  ex- 
perience, he  contributed  to  beauty,  and  beauty 
is  the  standing  confutation  of  evil. 

Bibliographical  Note. — Much  of  Tschaikowsky's  early 
work  was  for  piano,  but  most  of  his  piano  pieces  are  light  if 
not  trivial  in  character.  They  are  amusing  to  play  over,  but 
do  not  feirly  represent  his  genius.  Seventeen  of  them  are  to  be 
had  in  an  album  in  the  Collection  LitolfF.  The  Sonata,  op.  37, 
on  the  other  hand,  in  spite  of  its  marked  resemblance  to  Schu- 
mann's F-sharp  minor  Sonata,  is  one  of  the  finest  of  modern 
sonatas  for  piano.  The  Concertos  are  masterly,  but  very  diffi- 
cult. Most  of  the  important  orchestral  works  are  arranged  for 
foiu  hands.  The  most  interesting  are  the  Pathetic  Symphony, 
the  Fifth  Symphony,  which  should  be  equally  well  known,  the 
Orchestral  Suites,  particularly  the  third,  op.  55,  with  its  charm- 
ing Tema  con  J^ariazioni,  and  the  Overture,  Romeo  and  Juliet. 
Of  the  chamber-works,  the  third  String  Quartet,  op.  30,  and  the 
Trio,  are  especially  good.  Twenty-four  of  Tschaikowsky's 
songs  are  published  in  an  album  by  Novello,  Ewer  &  Co.,  and 
many  separately  by  G.  Schirmer  and  others. 


VII 
JOHANNES    BRAHMS 


JOHANNES    BRAHMS 


VII 
JOHANNES    BRAHMS 


F  all  the  figures  of  modern  music, 
brilliant  and  varied  as  they  are, 
impressing  one  with  the  many- 
sidedness  and  wide  scope  of  the 
art,  there  is  perhaps  only  one,  that 
of  Johannes  Brahms,  which  conveys  the  sense  of 
satisfying  poise,  self-control  and  sanity.  Others 
excel  him  in  particular  qualities.  Grieg  is  more 
delicate  and  intimate,  Dvorak  warmer  and  clearer 
in  color;  Saint-Saens  is  more  meteoric,  Franck 
more  recondite  and  subtle,  and  Tschaikowsky 
more  impassioned ;  but  Brahms  alone  has  Ho- 
meric simplicity,  the  primeval  health  of  the  well- 
balanced  man.  He  excels  all  his  contemporaries 
in  soundness  and  universality.  In  an  age  when 
many  people  are  uncertain  of  themselves  and  the 
world,  victims  of  a  pervasive  unrest  and  disap- 

»7S 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

pointment,  it  is  solacing  to  find  so  heroic  and 
simple  a  soul,  who  finds  life  acceptable,  meets 
it  genially,  and  utters  his  joy  and  his  sorrow 
with  the  old  classic  sincerity.  He  is  not  blighted 
by  any  of  the  myriad  forms  of  egotism, — by 
sentimentality,  by  the  itch  to  be  eflFective  at  all 
costs,  or  to  be  "  original,"  or  to  be  Byronic  or 
romantic  or  unfathomable.  He  has  no  "  mes- 
sage "  for  an  errant  world;  no  anathema,  either 
profoundly  gloomy  or  insolently  clever,  to  hurl 
at  God.  He  has  rather  a  deep  and  broad  imper- 
sonal love  of  life  ;  universal  joy  is  the  sum  and 
substance  of  his  expression. 

It  is  hard  to  say  whether  the  unique  great- 
ness of  Brahms  depends  more  on  this  emo- 
tional wholesomeness  and  simplicity  or  on  the 
intellectual  breadth  and  synthetic  power  with 
which  it  is  combined.  Probably  the  truth  is 
that  true  greatness  requires  the  interaction 
of  the  two.  At  any  rate,  Brahms  is  equally  re- 
markable, whether  considered  as  a  man  or  as  a 
musician,  for  both.  In  his  personal  character 
frankness,  modesty,  simple  and  homely  virtue 
were  combined  with  the  widest  sympathy,  the 
most  far-ranging  intelligence,  extreme  catholi- 
city and  tolerance.     In  music  he  prized  equally 

176 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

the  simplest  elements,  like  the  old  German  folk- 
songs and  the  Hungarian  dances,  and  the  most 
complex  artistic  forms  that  are  evolved  from 
them  by  creative  genius.  Like  Bach  and  Bee- 
thoven, he  spanned  the  whole  range  of  human 
interests  ;  deep  feeling  fills  his  music  with  primi- 
tive expressiveness,  and  at  the  same  time  great 
intellectual  power  gives  it  the  utmost  scope  and 
complexity.  Lacking  either  trait  he  would  not 
have  been  himself,  he  could  not  have  performed 
his  service  to  music. 

There  are  many  anecdotes  illustrating  the 
simple,  large  traits  of  the  man.  His  pleasures 
were  homely,  his  ambitions  inward  and  vital. 
He  cared  little  for  fame,  and  was  annoyed  by 
the  foolish  adulation  of  the  crowd.  To  a  long 
and  flowery  speech  addressed  to  him  on  the  pre- 
sentation of  some  sort  of  tribute  he  answered, 
with  admirable  brevity  and  utter  prose,  "Thank 
you  very  much."  Once  when  a  party  of  his 
friends  were  gathered  together  to  sample  a  rare 
old  wine,  somebody  pompously  announced, 
"What  Brahms  is  among  the  composers,  this 
Rauenthaler  is  among  the  wines.''  "  Ah," 
snapped  out  Brahms,  "  then  let's  have  a  bottle 
of  Bach  now."     He  often  remarked  that  one 

177 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

could  never  hope  to  get  upon  the  level  of  such 
giants  as  Bach  and  Beethoven  ;  one  could  only 
work  conscientiously  in  one's  own  field.  He 
had  the  disgust  of  shams  that  one  expects  in  so 
sincere  a  lover  of  the  genuine,  and  the  armor 
of  roughness  and  sarcasm  with  which  he  pro- 
tected himself  against  the  pretentious  was  for- 
midable. When  the  University  of  Cambridge 
offered  him  a  degree,  suggesting  that  he  write  a 
new  work  for  the  occasion,  he  replied  that  if 
any  of  his  old  works  seemed  good  enough  to 
them  he  should  be  happy  to  receive  the  honor, 
but  that  he  was  too  busy  to  write  a  new  one. 
There  was  about  him  something  shaggy,  bear- 
like, and  one  can  imagine  the  foxes  and  weasels 
scattering  at  his  growl. 

But  for  everything  fresh  and  genuine  Brahms 
had  the  heartiest  love.  He  is  one  of  the  in- 
numerable army  of  great  men  of  whom  bio- 
graphy loves  to  relate  that  they  always  carried 
candy  in  their  pockets  for  the  children,  and 
a  lady  described  in  a  letter  how  she  had  seen  him 
on  the  hotel  piazza,  on  all-fours,  clambered  over 
by  young  playmates.  He  was  on  cordial  terms 
with  waiters  and  servants,  and  told  Mr.  Hens- 
chel  with  emotion  the  story  of  a  serving-maid 
178 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

who  lost  her  position  in  order  to  shield  a  careless 
postman,  who,  being  married,  could  not  afford  to 
lose  his.  Another  pretty  story,  showing  at 
once  his  modesty  and  his  catholicity  of  taste,  re- 
counts how  all  the  musical  friends  of  the  wife  of 
Johann  Strauss,  the  great  waltz  composer,  were 
writing  their  names,  with  phrases  from  their 
works,  on  her  fan.  When  it  was  his  turn,  the 
composer  of  the  German  Requiem  wrote  the 
opening  phrase  of  the  "  Blue  Danube"  waltz, 
and  underneath  it  the  words,  "  Not,  I  regret  to 
say,  by  your  devoted  friend,  Johannes  Brahms." 
Thus  wholesome  and  unaffected  was  the  charac- 
ter of  this  great  man. 

Outwardly,  Brahms's  life  was  uneventful.  His 
father  was  a  contrabass-player  in  the  theatre  or- 
chestra of  Hamburg.  In  him  his  son's  posi- 
tiveness  of  character  seems  to  have  been  fore- 
shadowed, for  we  learn  that  when  the  conductor 
once  directed  him  not  to  play  so  loud,  he  re- 
plied with  dignity  :  "  Herr  Capellmeister,  this 
is  my  contrabass,  I  want  you  to  understand, 
and  I  shall  play  on  it  as  loud  as  I  please." 
Brahms  was  born  at  Hamburg  in  1 833, and  from 
his  earliest  years  was  trained  for  music  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course.     His  early  acquaintance  with  the 

179 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

best  works  was  of  incalculable  value  to  him. 
Mr.  Hadow  points  out  that  the  eclecticism  and 
solidity  of  his  style  was  doubtless  largely  due  to 
the  study  of  Bach  and  Beethoven  that  he  made 
in  youth  under  Marxsen.  He  had  the  advan- 
tage, too,  of  early  practical  experience.  When 
he  was  only  twenty  he  made  a  concert  tour  with 
Remenyi,  the  Hungarian  violinist,  during  which 
he  gained  much  training  and  confidence.  A 
feat  he  performed  during  this  trip  showed  even 
more  virtuosity  than  that  of  "  le  petit  Saint- 
Saens  "  already  recorded.  Having  to  play  the 
Kreutzer  Sonata  on  a  piano  too  low  in  pitch 
to  suit  Remenyi,  who  disliked  to  tune  down  his 
violin,  he  transposed  it  up  a  semi-tone,  and 
though  playing  without  notes,  performed  it  ac- 
curately and  with  spirit.  To  this  feat,  which 
aroused  the  admiration  of  Joachim,  Brahms 
owed  his  acquaintance  with  the  great  violinist, 
and  through  him  with  Liszt  and  Schumann. 
His  experience  with  the  former,  then  in  the 
height  of  his  fame,  was  unfortunate,  but  charac- 
teristic. Brahms,  who  was  worn  out  with  travel, 
fell  asleep  during  one  of  the  most  moving  parts 
of  Liszt's  Sonata,  which  the  great  virtuoso  was 
so  condescending  as  to  play.     Though  Brahms 

1 80 


JOHANNES        BRAHMS 

was  only  a  boy  at  the  time,  he  was  evidently, 
even  then,  undazzled  by  worldly  glory. 

His  meeting  with  Schumann  was  much  more 
happy ;  indeed,  it  was  one  of  the  important 
events  of  his  life.  Probably  no  young  com- 
poser ever  received  such  a  hearty  welcome  into 
the  musical  world  as  Schumann  extended  to 
Brahms  in  his  famous  article,  "  New  Paths." 
"  In  sure  and  unfaltering  accents,"  writes  Mr. 
Hadow,  "  he  proclaimed  the  advent  of  a  genius 
in  whom  the  spirit  of  the  age  should  find  its 
consummation  and  its  fulfilment ;  a  master  by 
whose  teaching  the  broken  phrases  should  grow 
articulate,  and  the  vague  aspirations  gather  into 
form  and  substance.  The  five-and-twenty  years 
of  wandering  were  over ;  at  last  a  leader  had 
arisen  who  should  direct  the  art  into  '  new 
paths,'  and  carry  it  a  stage  nearer  to  its  ap- 
pointed place."  It  is  not  surprising  that  Schu- 
mann, whose  generous  enthusiasm  often  led  him 
to  praise  worthless  work,  should  have  received 
the  early  compositions  of  Brahms  so  cordially. 
Their  qualities  were  such  as  to  affect  profoundly 
the  great  romanticist.  Although  the  essential 
character  of  his  mature  works  is  their  classical 
balance  and  restraint,  these  first  compositions 

i8i 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

show  an  exuberance,  a  wayward  fertility  of  in- 
vention, thoroughly  romantic.  His  first  ten 
opuses,  or  at  any  rate  the  three  sonatas  and  the 
four  ballades  for  piano,  are  frequently  turgid  in 
emotion,  and  ill-considered  in  form.  The  mas- 
sive vigor  of  his  later  work  here  appears  in  the 
guise  of  a  cyclopean  violence.  It  is  small  won- 
der that  Schumann,  dazzled,  delighted,  over- 
whelmed, gave  his  ardent  support  to  the  young 
man.  Brahms  now  found  himself  suddenly  fa- 
mous. He  was  discussed  everywhere,  his  pieces 
were  readily  accepted  by  publishers,  and  his  new 
compositions  were  awaited  with  interest. 

But  fortunate  as  all  this  was  for  Brahms,  it 
might  easily,  but  for  his  own  good  sense  and 
self-control,  have  turned  out  the  most  unfortu- 
nate thing  that  could  happen  to  him.  For  con- 
sider his  position.  He  was  a  brilliant  young 
composer  who  had  been  publicly  proclaimed  by 
one  of  the  highest  musical  authorities.  He  was 
expected  to  go  on  producing  works  ;  he  was 
almost  under  obligation  to  justify  his  impressive 
introduction.  Not  to  do  so  would  be  much 
worse  than  to  remain  a  nonentity  ;  it  would  be 
to  become  one.  And  he  had  meanwhile  every 
internal  reason  for  meeting  people's  demands. 

182 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

He  was  full  of  ideas,  conscious  of  power,  under 
inward  as  well  as  outward  compulsion  to  ex- 
press himself.  Yet  for  all  that,  he  was  in  real- 
ity immature,  unformed,  and  callow.  His  work, 
for  all  its  brilliancy,  was  whimsical  and  subject- 
ive. If  he  had  followed  out  the  path  he  was 
on,  as  any  contemporary  observer  would  have 
expected,  he  would  have  become  one  of  the 
most  radical  of  romanticists.  At  thirty  he  would 
have  been  a  bright  star  in  the  musical  firma- 
ment, at  forty  he  would  have  been  one  of  sev- 
eral bright  stars,  at  fifty  he  would  have  been 
clever  and  disappointed.  It  required  rare  in- 
sight in  so  young  a  man,  suddenly  successful,  to 
realize  the  danger,  rare  courage  to  avert  it. 
When  we  consider  the  temptation  it  must  have 
been  to  him  to  continue  these  easy  triumphs, 
when  we  imagine  the  inward  enthusiasm  of  crea- 
tion with  which  he  must  have  been  on  fire,  we  are 
ready  to  appreciate  the  next  event  of  the  drama. 
That  event  was  withdrawal  from  the  musical 
world  and  the  initiation  of  a  long  course  of  the 
severest  study.  When  he  was  a  little  over 
twenty-onf ,  Brahms  imposed  upon  himself  this 
arduous  training,  and  commanded  himself  to 
forego  for  a  while  the  eloquent  but  ill-controlled 
183 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

expression  hitherto  his,  in  order  to  acquire  a 
broader,  firmer,  purer,  and  stronger  style.  For 
four  or  five  years,  to  borrow  Stevenson's  ex- 
pression, he  "played  the  sedulous  ape"  to  Bach 
and  Beethoven,  and  in  a  minor  degree  to 
Haydn  and  Mozart.  The  complex  harmonies 
of  his  first  period  gave  place  to  simple,  strong 
successions  of  triads;  for  an  emotional  and  often 
vague  type  of  melody  he  substituted  clearly 
crystallized,  fluent,  and  gracious  phrases,  fre- 
quently devoid  of  any  particular  expression  ; 
the  whimsical  rhythms  of  the  piano  sonatas  were 
followed  by  the  square-cut  sections  of  the  Sere- 
nade, opus  II.  Of  course  the  immediate  eflfect 
of  all  this  was  a  great  sacrifice  of  what  is  called 
originality  ;  had  Brahms  not  had  complete  faith 
in  the  vitality  of  his  genius  he  could  not  have 
surrendered  so  much  of  immediate  attainment 
for  the  sake  of  an  ultimately  greater  mastery. 
It  is  a  profound  lesson  in  the  ethics  of  art  that 
a  man  who  could  write  the  fourth  of  the  Ballades, 
opus  ID,  should  have  been  willing  to  follow  it 
up  with  this  Serenade,  opus  ii.  Yet  Brahms 
knew  what  he  was  about,  and  his  first  large 
work,  the  Piano  Concerto,  opus  15,  shows  his 
individuality  of  expression  entirely  regained, 
"^  184 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

and  now  with  immensely  increased  power  and 
resource. 

Nothing  could  exhibit  better  than  this  dis- 
satisfaction with  his  early  work  and  withdrawal 
from  the  world  for  study,  that  intellectual 
breadth  which  we  have  noted  as  characteristic 
of  Brahms.  He  was  not  a  man  who  could  be 
content  with  a  narrow  personal  expression.  No 
subjective  heaven  could  satisfy  him.  His  wide 
human  sympathy  and  his  passion  for  artistic 
perfection  alike,  compelled  him  to  study  unre- 
mittingly, to  widen  his  ideals  as  his  powers  in- 
creased. No  fate  could  seem  to  him  so  hor- 
rible as  that  "  setting  "  of  the  mind  which  Is 
the  aesthetic  analogue  of  selfishness.  Origin- 
ality, which  so  often  degenerates  into  idiosyn- 
crasy, was  much  less  an  object  to  him  than  uni- 
versality, which  is  after  all  the  best  means  of 
being  serviceably  original.  Dr.  Deiters,  in  his 
reminiscences,  after  describing  this  period  of 
study,  continues :  "  Henceforth  we  find  him 
striving  after  moderation,  endeavoring  to  place 
himself  more  in  touch  with  the  public,  and  to 
conquer  all  subjectiveness.  To  arrive  at  per- 
spicuity and  precision  of  invention,  clear  design 
and  form,  careful  elaboration  and  accurate  bal- 

i8s 


FROM        GRIEG        TO        BRAHMS 

ancing  of  effect,  now  became  with  him  essential 
and  established  principles." 

From  this  time  until  the  end  of  his  life,  in 
fact,  a  period  of  only  a  little  less  than  forty 
years — he  died  in  1897 — Brahms  never  de- 
parted from  the  modes  of  work  and  the  ideals 
of  attainment  he  had  now  set  himself  He 
labored  indefatigably,  but  with  no  haste  or 
impatience.  He  was  too  painstaking  and  con- 
scientious a  workman  to  botch  his  products  by 
hurrying  them.  He  thus  described  to  his  friend, 
Mr.  Henschel,  his  method  of  composing : 
"  There  is  no  real  creating  without  hard  work. 
That  which  you  would  call  invention,  that  is  to 
say,  a  thought,  is  simply  an  inspiration  from 
above,  for  which  I  am  not  responsible,  which  is 
no  merit  of  mine.  Yes,  it  is  a  present,  a  gift, 
which  I  ought  even  to  despise  until  I  have  made 
it  my  own  by  right  of  hard  work.  And  there 
need  be  no  hurry  about  that  either.  It  is  as 
with  the  seed  corn  :  it  germinates  unconsciously 
and  in  spite  of  ourselves.  When  I,  for  instance, 
have  found  the  first  phrase  of  a  song,  I  might 
shut  the  book  there  and  then,  go  for  a  walk,  do 
some  other  work,  and  perhaps  not  think  of  it 
again  for  months.  Nothing,  however,  is  lost. 
186 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

If  afterward  I  approach  the  subject  again,  it  is 
sure  to  have  taken  shape  ;  I  can  now  really  be- 
gin to  work  at  it."  Another  inkling  of  the  se- 
verity of  his  standard  we  have  in  a  remark  he 
made  after  pointing  out  certain  imperfections  in 
a  song  of  Mr,  Henschel's.  "  Whether  it  is 
beautiful  also,"  he  said,  "  is  an  entirely  different 
matter  ;  but  perfect  it  must  be."  With  such  a 
standard,  we  need  not  be  surprised  that  he  im- 
posed so  severe  a  training  upon  himself  at 
twenty-one,  or  that  he  continued  all  his  life  the 
practice  of  writing  each  day  a  contrapuntal  ex- 
ercise, or  that  he  wrought  for  ten  years  over  his 
first  symphony,  that  Titanic  work.  Thus  la- 
boring always  with  the  same  calm  persistence, 
returning  upon  his  ideas  until  he  could  present 
them  with  perfect  clarity,  caring  little  for  the  in- 
difference or  the  applause  of  the  public,  but 
much  for  the  approval  of  his  own  fastidious  taste, 
he  produced  year  by  year  an  astonishing  series 
of  masterpieces.  No  one  has  better  described 
the  kind  of  work  that  made  Brahms  great  than 
Matthew  Arnold  in  those  lines  about  labor 

*«  which  in  lasting  fruit  outgrows 
Far  noisier  schemes  ;  accomplished  in  repose  ; 
Too  great  for  haste,  too  high  for  rivalry." 

187 


FROM        GRIEG        TO        BRAHMS 

A  just  conception  of  this  broad  scheme  of 
Brahms's  ideal  and  of  his  thoroughness  in  work- 
ing it  out  is  necessary,  we  must  insist,  not  only 
to  appreciation  of  the  man  himself,  but  to  any 
true  understanding  of  his  relation  and  service  to 
music.  Brahms  was  enabled,  by  the  tireless 
training  to  which  he  subjected  his  fertile  and 
many-sided  genius,  to  couch  romantic  feeling 
in  classic  form.  In  order  to  grasp  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  such  a  work,  it  is  necessary  to  bear 
in  mind  those  fundamental  principles  of  musical 
effect  and  facts  of  musical  history  which  have 
been  presented  in  the  Introduction.  Music 
has  resulted  from  the  gradual  formal  definition, 
by  time  and  pitch  relations,  of  those  vague  ges- 
tures and  utterances  by  which  men  expressed 
their  primitive  feelings.  It  has  been,  in  a  word, 
the  product  of  two  human  instincts,  neither  of 
which  alone  would  have  sufficed  to  produce  it 
— the  instinct  for  expression  and  the  instinct 
for  beauty.  But  these  instincts  have  not  worked 
with  precisely  equal  efficacy  at  all  times.  In 
fact,  so  limited  is  human  attention,  so  few 
things  can  men  attend  to  at  once,  every  great 
development  of  expression  has  generally  dis- 
turbed the  equilibrium  requisite  to  beauty,  and 

l88 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

every  great  advance  in  beauty  has  generally,  for 
the  time  being,  restrained  the  eloquence  of  ex- 
pression. Musical  history  is  a  series  of  reac- 
tions between  man's  primal  emotional  impulse 
and  his  desire  for  intelligibility.  First,  urgency 
of  feeling  drives  him  to  a  formless  cry  ;  then 
the  wish  to  be  understood  and  the  love  of 
beauty  induce  him  to  formulate  this  cry  ;  fin- 
ally, as  soon  as  the  formula  is  felt  to  be  inade- 
quate to  further  expression,  it  is  discarded  in 
favor  of  one  more  elastic  and  complex.  The 
conventions  that  are  helpful  at  one  stage  prove 
hindrances  in  the  next.  The  same  forms  that 
subserve  growth  up  to  a  certain  point,  beyond 
that  point  hamper  it.  Accordingly,  in  the  his- 
tory of  music,  formulation  has  always  been  fol- 
lowed by  relaxation  of  the  formulae  to  admit  of 
new  expression  ;  and  when  new  expression  has 
been  thus  evolved,  a  new  and  more  complex 
form  has  had  to  be  worked  out  to  regulate  and 
fix  it. 

Such  a  period  of  relaxation  was  that  which 
intervened  between  Beethoven  and  Brahms. 
The  romanticists,  headed  by  Schumann, 
seized  upon  the  possibilities  of  poignant  expres- 
sion that  they  were  quick  to  recognize  in  their 
189 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

heritage  from  Beethoven,  and  developed  an  ex- 
traordinarily mobile  and  eloquent  instrument  for 
voicing  personal  emotion.  At  the  same  time 
they  inevitably  lost  the  perfect  control  of  form, 
the  transparent  lucidity  of  structure,  that  had 
characterized  Beethoven.  In  some  respects 
more  moving,  they  were  on  the  whole  less  in- 
telligible. They  were  enriching  their  art,  and 
must  leave  the  perfect  subordination  of  the  new 
material  to  their  successors.  It  is  most  inter- 
esting to  trace  the  analogy  between  this  devel- 
opment of  musical  expression  and  the  growth 
of  emotional  life  in  the  individual,  and  to  ob- 
serve how  in  both  the  period  of  experience,  in 
which  emotion  is  felt  in  all  its  immediate  stress, 
inhibiting  all  else  and  being  therefore  conceived 
in  no  relations,  but  merely  as  a  single  and  ul- 
timate fact,  is  followed  by  the  period  of  medita- 
tion and  self-inspection,  when  the  whole  emo- 
tional life  is  grouped  into  order,  and  the  man 
learns  to  see  the  significance  and  the  spiritual 
value  of  his  feelings.  With  the  romanticists  music 
neceasarily  became  more  and  more  the  medium 
of  personal  passion,  less  and  less  the  revealer 
of  universal  order. 

Browning,  himself  a  romanticist  through  and 
190 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

through,  has  summed  up  the  spirit  of  roman- 
ticism in  a  single  stanza  of  his  "  Old  Pictures 
in  Florence  " : 

**  On  which  I  conclude,  that  the  early  painters. 

To  cries  of  *  Greek  art  and  what  more  wish  you  ?  * 
Replied,   '  To  become  now  self-acquainters, 

And  paint  man,  man,  whatever  the  issue  ! 
Make  new  hopes  shine  through  the  flesh  they  fray. 

New  fears  aggrandize  the  rags  and  tatters  : 
To  bring  the  invisible  full  into  play ! 

Let  the  visible  go  to  the  dogs — what  matters?' " 

The  individualism,  the  subjectivity,  the  mys- 
tical distrust  of  definite  forms,  so  stirringly  cham- 
pioned in  these  lines,  are  vital  principles  in  the 
work  of  all  the  composers  of  the  generation  after 
Beethoven.  Thus  in  Schumann's  music,  for 
example,  the  generality  of  the  emotional  burden 
of  classical  music  is  changed  to  something  far 
more  individual  and  introspective.  Expression 
is  more  tinged  by  temperament ;  the  work  of  art 
exhales  a  personal  fragrance.  Schumann  tells 
us  not  merely  of  love,  longing,  and  passion,  but 
of  Robert  Schumann's  love,  longing,  and  pas- 
sion. His  work,  for  all  its  beauty,  is  much  less 
inclusive  and  complete  than  the  classical  master- 
pieces. In  the  same  way  Chopin  filled  his  noc- 
191 


FROM        GRIEG        TO        BRAHMS 

turnes  and  preludes  with  the  lovely  but  often 
unhealthy  poetry  of  the  isolated  dreamer,  and 
Wagner,  separating  the  passion  of  love  from  the 
other  interests  of  the  heart,  and  thus  throwing 
out  of  balance  the  spiritual  economy,  sacrificed 
as  much  in  health  as  he  gained  in  potency. 
And  of  the  men  we  have  been  studying,  Grieg, 
Franck,  and  Tschaikowsky  also  illustrate  in  var- 
ious ways  the  tendency  to  "  paint  man,  man, 
whatever  the  issue,"  to  let  the  "  flesh  be  frayed  " 
and  the  "  visible  go  to  the  dogs."  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  say  that  all  these  men  have  their 
legitimate  place.  Their  message  of  passion  and 
unrest,  already  audible  in  Beethoven,  was  the 
inevitable  and  indispensable  expression  of  one 
of  those  self-conscious  phases  in  man's  growth 
when  he  freshly  realizes  his  finitude.  Their  ut- 
terances make  a  deeply  pathetic  appeal  to  us, 
because  they  reveal  all  the  terrible  sadness  of 
personal  life  which  as  yet  finds  no  resting-place 
in  the  universal.  Aspiration  and  disappoint- 
ment, bitter  grief  and  blind  pain,  speak  in  their 
fragmentary  loveliness.  The  romanticists  will 
never  want  for  our  love,  since  they  interpret  to 
us  a  part  of  our  own  experience. 

But,  as  we  have  said,  after  man  suffers  emo- 
192 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

tion  he  reflects  upon  it ;  after  he  feels  the  parts 
he  learns  the  whole  ;  after  musicians  have  de- 
veloped new  capabilities  of  expression  they  pro- 
ceed to  subordinate  them  to  plastic  beauty. 
Adjustment  follows  discovery,  and  the  romantic 
takes  on  classical  perfection.  The  chaos  of  one 
age  is  thus  the  order  of  the  next ;  and  after 
Schumann  and  his  fellows  had  enriched  the 
world  with  their  beautiful  but  fragmentary  and 
wayward  feelings,  it  remained  for  Brahms  to 
essay  a  further  conquest ;  to  commence  at  least 
(and  perhaps  he  has  not  done  more)  the  task 
of  making  these  new  feelings  more  intelligible, 
of  clarifying  their  turgidity,  of  subordinating 
their  conflicts  in  a  more  complex  harmony. 
Or,  to  state  his  function  in  more  specifically 
musical  terms,  he  had  to  discover  how  rugged 
melodic  outlines,  bold  harmonic  progressions, 
and  the  large-spanned  phrases  of  modern  mu- 
sical thought  could  be  organized  and  brought 
into  that  unity  in  variety  which  is  beauty. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  grasp  the  full 
significance  of  that  severe  training  to  which 
Brahms  subjected  himself  in  his  youth.  With- 
out it  he  would  have  gone  on  doing  brilliant 
work  of  the  romantic  order,  like  his  first  com- 
193 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

positions,  but  he  would  never  have  attained  the 
grasp  and  self-control  that  raised  him  above  all 
his  contemporaries  and  that  made  possible  his 
peculiar  service  to  music.  That  period  of  train- 
ing was  the  artistic  counterpart  of  what  many 
men  undergo  when  they  discover  how  many 
sacrifices  and  how  long  a  labor  are  necessary  to 
him  who  would  find  a  spiritual  dwelling-place 
on  earth.  Many  pleasures  must  be  renounced 
before  happiness  will  abide ;  evil  and  suffering 
are  opaque  save  to  the  steadfast  eye.  So,  in 
music,  effects  and  eloquences  and  crises  must 
be  the  handmaids  of  orderly  beauty,  and  tones 
are  stubborn  material  until  one  has  learned  by 
hard  work  to  make  them  transmit  thoughts. 
/Tcchnic  is  in  the  musician  what  character  is 
"  in  the  man.  It  is  the  power  to  stamp  matter 
with  spirit.  Brahms's  long  apprenticeship  was 
therefore  needed  in  the  first  place  to  make  him 
master  of  his  materials  ;  in  the  second  place  to 
teach  him  the  deeper  lesson  that  the  part  must 
be  subordinated  to  the  whole,  or,  in  musical 
language,  expression  to  beauty. 

He  achieved  this  subordination,  however,  not 
by  the  negative  process  of  suppression,  but  by 
conquest    and    co-ordination.      In    his    music 
194 


JOHANNES        BRAHMS 

emotion  is  not  excluded,  it  is  regulated  ;  his 
work  is  not  a  reversion  to  an  earlier  and  simpler 
type,  it  is  the  gathering  and  fusing  together  o( 
fragmentary  new  elements,  resulting  in  a  more 
complex  organism.  Thus  it  is  a  very  super- 
ficial view  to  say  that  he  "went  back"  to 
Beethoven.  He  drew  guidance  from  the  same 
natural  laws  that  had  guided  Beethoven,  but  he 
applied  these  laws  to  a  material  of  novel  thought 
and  emotion  that  had  come  into  being  after 
Beethoven.  Had  he  repudiated  the  new  mate- 
rial, even  for  the  reason  that  he  considered  it 
incapable  of  organization,  he  would  have  been 
a  pedant,  which  is  to  say  a  musical  Pharisee. 
One  masters  by  recognizing  and  using,  not  by 
repudiating.  And  just  as  a  wise  man  will  not 
become  ascetical  merely  because  his  passions 
give  him  trouble,  but  will  study  to  find  out 
their  true  relation  to  bim  and  then  keep  them 
in  it,  so  Brahms  recognized  the  wayward  beau- 
ties of  romanticism,  and  studied  how  to  make 
them  ancillary  to  that  order  and  fair  proportion 
which  is  the  soul  of  music. 

To  this  great  artistic  service  he  was  fitted  by 
both  the  qualities  which  have  been  pointed  out 
above  as  co-operating  to  form  his  unique  nature. 

»9S 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

His  deep  and  simple  human  feeling,  which  put 
him  in  sympathy  with  the  aims  of  the  romanti- 
cists and  enabled  him  to  grasp  their  meaning, 
would  not  have  sufficed  alone;  but  fortunately 
it  was  associated  with  an  almost  unprecedented 
scope  of  intellect  and  power  of  synthesis. 
Brahms's  assimilative  faculty  was  enormous. 
Like  a  fine  tree  that  draws  the  materials  of  its 
beauty  through  a  thousand  roots  that  reach  into 
distant  pockets  of  earth,  he  gathered  the  mate- 
rials of  his  perfectly  unified  and  transparent 
style  from  all  sorts  of  forgotten  nooks  and 
crannies  of  mediaeval  music.  Spitta  remarks 
his  use  of  the  old  Dorian  and  Phrygian  modes; 
of  complex  rhythms  that  had  long  fallen  into 
disuse;  of  those  means  of  thematic  develop- 
ment, such  as  augmentation  and  diminution, 
which  flourished  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries;  of  "the  basso  ostinato  with  the  styles 
pertaining  to  it — the  Passacaglia  and  the  Cia- 
conna ; "  and  of  the  old  style  of  variations,  in 
which  the  bass  rather  than  the  melody  is  the 
feature  retained.  "  No  musician,"  Spitta  con- 
cludes, "  was  more  well  read  in  his  art  or  more 
constantly  disposed  to  appropriate  all  that  was 
new,  especially  all  newly  discovered  treasures  of 
196 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

the  past.  His  passion  for  learning  wandered, 
indeed,  into  every  field,  and  resulted  in  a  rich 
and  most  original  culture  of  mind,  for  his 
knowledge  was  not  mere  acquirement,  but  be- 
came a  living  and  fruitful  thing." 

The  vitality  of  his  relation  with  the  past  is 
nowhere  more  strikingly  shown  than  in  his  in- 
debtedness to  the  two  greatest  masters  of  pure 
music,  Bach  and  Beethoven.  He  has  gathered 
up  the  threads  of  their  dissimilar  styles,  and 
knitted  them  into  one  solid  fabric.  The  great 
glory  of  Bach,  as  is  well-known,  was  his  won- 
derful polyphony.  In  his  work  every  voice  is 
a  melody,  everything  sings,  there  is  no  dead 
wood,  no  flaccid  filling.  Beethoven,  on  the 
other  hand,  turning  to  new  problems,  to  prob- 
lems of  structure  which  demanded  a  new  sort 
of  control  of  key-relationship  and  the  thematic 
development  of  single  "  subjects "  or  tunes, 
necessarily  paid  less  attention  to  the  subordinate 
voices.  His  style  is  homophonic  or  one-voiced 
rather  than  polyphonic.  The  interest  centres 
in  one  melody  and  its  evolutions,  while  the 
others  fall  into  the  subordinate  position  of  accom- 
paniment. But  Brahms,  retaining  and  extend- 
ing the  complexity  of  structure,  the  architectural 
197 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

variety  and  solidity,  that  was  Beethoven's  great 
achievement,  has  succeeded  in  giving  new 
melodic  life  also  to  the  inner  parts,  so  that  the 
significance  and  interest  of  the  whole  web  re- 
mind one  of  Bach.  His  skill  as  a  contrapuntist 
is  as  notable  as  his  command  of  structure. 
Thanks  to  his  wonderful  power  of  assimilating 
methods,  of  adapting  them  to  the  needs  of  his 
own  expression,  so  that  he  remains  personal 
and  genuine  while  becoming  universal  in  scope, 
he  is  the  true  heir  and  comrade  of  Bach  and 
Beethoven. 

It  was,  perhaps,  inevitable  that  in  his  great 
work  of  synthesis  and  formulation  he  should 
sometimes  be  led  into  dry  formalism.  One  who 
concerns  himself  so  indefatigably  with  the  tech- 
nic  of  construction  naturally  comes  to  take  a 
keen  joy  in  the  exercise  of  his  skill  ;  and  this 
may  easily  result,  when  thought  halts,  in  the 
fabrication  of  ingenuities  and  Chinese  puzzles. 
Some  pages  of  Brahms  consist  of  infinitely 
dexterous  manipulations  of  meaningless  phrases. 
And  though  one  must  guard  against  assuming 
that  he  is  dry  whenever  one  does  not  readily 
follow  him,  it  certainly  must  be  confessed  that 
sometimes  he  seems  to  write  merely  for  the  sake 
19S 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

of  writing.  This  occasional  over-intellectualism, 
raorever,  is  unfortunately  aggravated  by  a  lack 
of  feeling  for  the  purely  sensuous  side  of  music, 
for  clear,  rich  tone-combination,  to  which 
Brahms  must  plead  guilty.  His  orchestra  is 
often  muddy  and  hoarse,  his  piano  style  often 
shows  neglect  of  the  necessities  of  sonority  and 
clearness.  Dr.  William  Mason  testifies  that 
his  touch  was  hard  and  unsympathetic,  and  it  is 
rather  significant  of  insensibility  or  indifference 
to  tone  color  that  his  Piano  Quintet  was  at  first 
written  for  strings  alone,  and  that  the  Varia- 
tions on  a  Theme  of  Haydn  exist  in  two  forms, 
one  for  orchestra  and  the  other  for  two  pianos, 
neither  of  which  is  announced  as  the  original 
version.  There  is  danger  of  exaggerating  the 
importance  of  such  facts,  however.  Austere  and 
somber  as  Brahms's  scoring  generally  is,  it  may 
be  held  that  so  it  should  be  to  be  in  keeping 
with  the  musical  conception.  And  if  his  piano 
style  is  novel  it  is  not  really  unidiomatic  or  with- 
out its  own  peculiar  eflfects. 

However  extreme  we  may  consider  the  weak- 
ness of  sensuous  perception,  which  on  the  whole 
cannot  be  denied  in  Brahms,  it  is  the  only  seri- 
ous flaw  in  a  man  equally  great  on  the  emo- 
199 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

tional  and  the  intellectual  sides.  Very  remark- 
able is  the  richness  and  at  the  same  time  the 
balance  of  Brahms's  nature.  He  recognized 
early  in  life  that  feelings  were  valuable,  not  for 
their  mere  poignancy,  but  by  their  effect  on  the 
central  spirit;  and  he  labored  incessantly  to  ex- 
press them  with  eloquence  and  yet  with  control. 
It  is  only  little  men  who  estimate  an  emotion 
by  its  intensity,  and  who  try  to  express  every- 
thing, the  hysterical  as  well  as  the  deliberate, 
the  trivial  and  mischievous  as  well  as  the 
weighty  and  the  inspiring.  They  imagine  that 
success  in  art  depends  on  the  number  of  things 
they  say,  that  to  voice  a  temperament  is  to  build 
a  character.  But  great  men,  though  they  reject 
no  sincere  human  feeling,  care  more  to  give  the 
right  impression  than  to  be  exhaustive ;  and  the 
greatest  feel  instinctively  that  the  last  word  of 
their  art  must  be  constructive,  positive,  upbuild- 
ing. Thoreau  remarks  that  the  singer  can 
easily  move  us  to  tears  or  laughter,  but  asks, 
"Where  is  he  who  can  communicate  a  pure 
morning  joy  ?  "  It  is  Brahms's  unique  great- 
ness among  modern  composers  that  he  was  able 
to  infuse  his  music,  in  which  all  personal  passion 
is  made  accessory  to  beauty,  with  this   "  pure 


JOHANNES       BRAHMS 

morning  joy."  His  aim  in  writing  is  some- 
thing more  than  to  chronicle  subjective  feelings, 
however  various  or  intense.  And  that  is  why 
we  have  to  consider  him  the  greatest  composer 
of  his  time,  even  though  in  particular  depart- 
ments he  must  take  a  place  second  to  others. 
Steadily  avoiding  all  fragmentary,  wayward,  and 
distortive  expression,  using  always  his  consum- 
mate mastery  of  his  medium  and  his  synthetic 
power  of  thought  to  subserve  a  large  and  univer- 
sal utterance,  he  points  the  way  for  a  healthy 
and  fruitful  development  of  music  in  the  future. 

Bibliographical  Note Of  particular  works  of  Brahms 

that  the  reader  might  wish  to  study,  here  are  some  of  the  most 
characteristic  and  well  known.  Piano  pieces  :  The  Waltzes,  op. 
39  ;  the  Clavierstiicke,  op.  76,  particularly  No.  a  ;  the  two 
Rhapsodies,  op.  79  ;  and,  in  his  later,  more  complex  style,  the 
piano  pieces,  op.  116,  117,  118  and  119.  Songs  :  Liebestreu, 
op.  3,  No.  I  }  Wiegenlied,  op.  49,  No.  4 ;  the  Sapphic  Ode, 
op,  94,  No.  4;  Standchen,  op.  106,  No.  i  ;  Maine  Liebe  ist 
grun,  op.  63,  No.  5  ;  O  Kuhler  Wald,  op.  72,  No.  3.  Cham- 
ber works  :  the  two  Violin  Sonatas,  op.  78  and  100,  are  among 
his  most  genial  works ;  the  Quartets,  op.  25  and  ^6  ;  the  Trio, 
op.  8;  the  Sextet,  op.  18.  Of  his  orchestral  works  none  are 
finer  than  the  Second  and  Third  Symphonies,  the  Violin  Concerto, 
op.  77,  and  the  Variations  on  a  Theme  of  Haydn,  op.  56a.  The 
choral  works,  of  which  the  Song  of  Destiny  is  the  greatest,  are 
unhappily  seldom  given. 


VIII 
EPILOGUE:     THE    MEAN- 
ING   OF    MUSIC 


VIII 
EPILOGUE: 

THE    MEANING 
MUSIC 


OF 


N  the  foregoing  studies  we  have  been 
considering,  first,  certain  fundamental 
principles  of  musical  effect  in  the  light 
of  which  alone  all  special  contribu- 
tions to  music,  however  various,  can 
be  understood,  and  second,  the  particular  con- 
tributions of  half  a  dozen  of  our  contemporary 
composers,  in  which  we  have  seen  those  prin- 
ciples exemplified.  We  have  assumed,  all  along, 
that  music  is  of  undeniable  interest  to  us,  that 
it  has  something  to  say,  that  it  is  of  sufficient 
human  value  to  be  worth  studying.  But  now, 
before  closing,  it  will  be  well  to  examine  for  a 
moment  the  grounds  of  that  tacit  assumption, 
to  ask  ourselves  what,  after  all,  is  the  reason  of 
our  interest  in  music.  Why  do  we  care  for  it  ? 
What  does  it  mean  ?     To  such  questions  there 

S05 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

are  doubtless  many  answers.  Doubtless  differ- 
ent hearers  take  different  kinds  of  delight  in  it, 
and  its  modes  of  appeal  are  as  various  as  their 
temperaments.  Yet  music  has  one  sort  of  ap- 
peal which  is  deeper  than  all  others,  which  in- 
deed acts  universally,  and  which  depends  on  its 
extraordinary  power  to  tranquilize  the  heart,  to 
instil  a  peace  quite  magical  and  beyond  explana- 
tion. It  soothes  while  it  excites  ;  and  more 
wonderful  than  its  ability  to  stimulate  our  emo- 
tions is  its  power  to  reconcile  and  harmo- 
nize them.  And  this  it  does  without  the  aid  of 
any  intellectual  process ;  it  offers  us  no  argu- 
ment, it  formulates  no  solacing  philosophy ; 
rather  it  aboHshes  thought,  to  set  up  in  its  stead 
a  novel  activity  that  is  felt  as  immediately,  in- 
explicably grateful.  To  suggest  how  the  com- 
bination of  sounds  can  have  upon  us  so  pro- 
found an  effect  will  be  the  object  of  this  final 
paper. 

Mortal  life,  as  we  become  acquainted  with  it 
in  experience,  unshaped  by  any  philosophic  or 
artistic  activity,  is  complex,  confused,  and  irra- 
tional. From  our  babyhood,  when  we  put  our 
fingers  in  the  pretty  fire  and  draw  them  forth 
206 


THE        MEANING       OF         MUSIC 

cruelly  burned,  until  the  moment  when  a 
draught  of  air  or  the  bursting  of  a  blood-vessel 
suddenly  arrests  our  important  enterprises  in 
mid-course,  we  constantly  find  our  faculties, 
both  animal  and  divine,  encountering  a  world 
not  kindly  adjusted.  On  the  material  plane 
we  find  drought,  frost,  and  famine,  storm,  ac- 
cident, disease.  On  the  plane  of  feeling  and 
sentiment  there  are  the  separation  of  friends, 
the  death  of  dear  ones,  loneliness,  doubt,  and 
disappointment ;  in  the  world  of  the  spirit  are 
sin  and  sorrow,  the  weakness  and  folly  of  our- 
selves and  of  others,  meaningless  mischance, 
and  the  caprice  of  destiny.  In  such  a  world, 
good  fortune  must  often  seem  as  insulting  as 
bad,  and  happiness  no  better  than  misery. 
Where  all  is  accidental,  how  can  aught  be  signi- 
ficant ?  When  our  highest  interests  are  defence- 
less against  the  onslaught,  not  of  grave  evil  but 
of  mere  absurdity,  how  is  it  possible  to  live 
with  dignity  or  hope  ? 

Nevertheless,  men  have,  by  various  means, 
fought  sturdily  against  the  capriciousness  of  life 
and  the  despair  it  engenders.  All  practical  mo- 
rality, to  begin  with,  is  one  form  of  defence — 
comparatively  a  low  form,  but  still  of  use.    The 

•07 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

moral  man,  facing  the  universe  undaunted,  as- 
serts his  own  power  to  develop  in  it  at  least  his 
personal  particle  of  righteousness.  As  much 
strength  as  he  has  shall  be  spent  on  the  side  of 
order.  If  the  world  be  unjust,  he  at  least  will 
love  justice.  If  every  one  else  be  ruled  by 
chance,  he  at  least  will  be  ruled  by  reason.  If 
wicked  men  pursue  evil,  he  will  pursue  good. 
From  the  earliest  to  the  latest  times  literature 
has  recorded  such  resolve.  The  letters  of  Ste- 
venson no  less  than  the  journal  of  Marcus  Au- 
relius  relate  the  purpose  of  the  brave  individual 
to  graft,  to  impress — yes,  to  inflict — human 
meaning  upon  an  untamed  universe.  The  stoic 
faith  has  always  built  on  the  practical  power  of 
the  single  man  ;  a  phrase  of  Thoreau's  might 
serve  for  its  motto  :  "In  the  midst  of  this  laby- 
rinth let  us  live  a  thread  of  life." 

The  intellect  is  more  ambitious  than  the 
moral  sense.  Not  content  with  the  degree  of 
unity  a  man  can  develop  in  the  seething  world 
by  his  single  action,  philosophy  seeks  to  prove 
that  the  world  itself,  as  a  whole,  deriving  its 
nature  as  it  must  from  mind,  is  orderly.  Con- 
structive idealism,  beginning  with  the  argument 
that  a  subject  cannot  truly  know  an  object  un- 

20g 


THE        MEANING       OF         MUSIC 

less  both  are  included  in  a  higher  mental  organ- 
ism, deduces  from  the  common  facts  of  con- 
sciousness the  real  existence  of  an  all-inclusive 
Spirit.  Furthermore,  one  of  its  ablest  modern 
exponents.  Professor  Josiah  Royce,  has  worked 
out  the  ethical  implications  of  the  doctrine  in  a 
way  that  concerns  us  here.  He  shows  that  the 
apparent  irrationality  of  our  world  proceeds 
from  the  fragmentariness  of  our  finite  view,  and 
that  God,  who  sees  his  universe  as  a  whole, 
must  find  it  rational ;  so  that  "  our  chaos  is  his 
order,  our  farce  his  tragedy,  our  horror  his  spir- 
ituality." Were  our  span  of  consciousness 
widened  until  we  could  perceive  the  whole  of 
existence  in  one  thought,  we  should  find  the 
deep  organic  beauty  that  now  we  yearn  for  in 
vain.  Philosophy,  then,  assures  us  both  of  the 
fundamental  perfection  of  the  world  as  a  whole 
and  of  the  inaccessibility  of  this  perfection  to 
us.  Deeply  satisfying  because  so  sure  and  so 
ultimate,  it  tells  us  nothing  of  details,  it  has  no 
direct  word  for  the  sorrows  and  the  perplexities 
of  our  daily  lives.  It  leaves  us  often  longing 
for  a  warmer,  nearer  assurance  of  the  rightness 
of  things. 

And  so,  to  many,  human  love  first  reveals 
009 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

the  divine  unity  all  are  seeking.  The  lover 
reasons  little  about  consciousness ;  he  knows, 
directly  and  overpoweringly,  that  his  one  need  is 
to  serve  the  beloved.  This  commanding  aim 
employs  all  his  impulses  and  appetites,  and  he 
finds  in  pure  disinterested  service  a  peace  that 
his  own  warring  desires  cannot  invade.  He 
comprehends  for  the  first  time  his  own  true 
identity,  he  becomes  integral  and  serene.  Fur- 
thermore, as  his  love  grows  deeper,  as  it  spends 
its  inexhaustible  wealth  more  widely,  learning  to 
take  for  object  not  only  the  human  beloved,  but 
all  virtue  and  beauty,  his  spiritual  life  becomes 
daily  larger  and  surer,  it  unifies  an  ever  com- 
plexer  body  of  thought  and  deed  in  its  perfect 
organism.  It  acquires  an  alchemy  with  which 
it  can  dissolve  even  the  stubborn  externali- 
ties of  fate ;  for  fate  itself  cannot  take  away  the 
power  to  serve,  and  in  service  love  finds  its  joy. 
Renunciation,  even,  it  never  enters  upon  except 
to  gain  a  higher  good,  and  that  essence  in  the 
soul  which  makes  a  sacrifice  is  one  with  that 
which  in  happier  circumstances  would  enjoy. 
Love  thus  shares  already  the  nature  of  religion, 
and  confers  the  same  benefits.  In  exacting  en- 
tire self-surrender  it  bequeaths  superiority  to  ac- 


THE        MEANING       OF         MUSIC 

cident,  an  unassailable  serenity.  Indeed,  reli- 
gion is  but  love  expanded  and  made  univer- 
sal. 

Religion,  then,  man's  final  means  of  reading 
rationality  in  the  countenance  of  an  irrational 
world,  is  the  culmination  toward  which  the  other 
three  naturally  tend.  It  is  the  natural  goal  of 
love,  because  he  who  loves  the  divine  in  one 
person  must  soon  love  it  in  all.  It  is  the  goal 
of  science  and  philosophy,  because  these  place 
the  heart  open-eyed  upon  the  threshold  of  the 
radiant  reality,  where  it  cannot  but  worship.  It 
is  the  natural  outcome  of  morality,  too  ;  for  the 
moral  man,  seeing  others  eager  for  goodness, 
learns  that  the  divine  virtue  is  everywhere. 
And  religion  retains  in  itself  the  character  of  all 
these  tributary  insights.  Like  morality  it  prompts 
devotion  of  personal  strength  to  the  good  cause ; 
like  philosophy,  it  affords  clarity  and  breadth  of 
vision ;  it  is  animated  by  the  same  pure,  deep 
passion  that  is  at  the  soul  of  love.  It  offers 
man  a  code  of  conduct,  a  cosmology,  and  an 
object  of  devotion.  Surely,  one  would  think 
he  could  ask  for  nothing  more. 

But,  alas  !  we  are  not  perfect  creatures,  cap- 
able of  living  always  on  these  heights.     Hours 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

of  weariness  and  confusion  overtake  us,  our 
glimpses  of  the  shining  cosmos  fade  away,  and 
we  are  left  groping  in  a  formless  world.  The 
universe  does  not  change,  but  our  faculties  be- 
come jaded,  we  cannot  keep  them  at  the  nec- 
essary pitch.  The  moralist  knows  moods  of  dis- 
couragement, when  his  power  is  at  ebb,  and  the 
forces  of  evil  press  him  sorely,  entering  even 
his  own  heart  in  the  forms  of  temptation,  sloth, 
and  despair.  The  scientist  encounters  facts 
which  his  schemes  cannot  embrace,  and  for  the 
moment  interprets  his  own  limitation  as  a  dis- 
order in  nature.  The  philosopher  often  finds 
the  universe  more  than  a  match  for  his  syn- 
thetic powers  of  thought.  Love  has  its  trage- 
dies, and  faith  its  hours  of  eclipse.  Even 
Christ  must  cry  out,  "  My  God !  my  God ! 
why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  .?  "  The  world,  in 
a  word,  is  too  big  for  us.  Facing  its  vast  whirl 
and  glitter  with  our  modest  kit  of  senses,  in- 
tellect, and  spirit,  we  are  blinded,  deafened, 
dizzied,  completely  bewildered.  And  then,  re- 
calling with  wistful  regret  our  partial  insights, 
we  fancy  them  gone  forever  and  ourselves 
wholly  lost. 

It  is  just  at  these  moments,  when  the  mind 


THE        MEANING       OF         MUSIC 

momentarily  fails  in  its  unequal  struggle  with 
reality,  that  we  discover  the  deep  meaning  and 
the  supreme  service  of  Art.  For  Art  is  the 
tender  human  servant  that  man  has  made  him- 
self for  his  solace.  He  has  adjusted  it  to  his 
faculties  and  restrained  it  within  his  scope ; 
fashioning  it  from  the  infinite  substance,  he  has 
impressed  upon  it  finite  form.  It  is  a  voice 
less  thunderous  than  nature's,  a  lamp  that  does 
not  dazzle  like  the  great  sun.  It  simplifies  the 
wealth  that  is  too  luxuriant,  and  makes  tangible 
a  fragment  of  the  great  ethereal  beauty  no 
mortal  can  grasp.  Thus  art  is  visible  and  au- 
dible rightness ;  it  is  the  love  of  God  made 
manifest  to  the  senses,  a  particular  symbol  of  a 
universal  harmony.  When  we  are  too  weary 
to  be  comforted  by  the  remote,  abstract  good 
that  religion  promises,  art  comes  with  its  im- 
mediate, substantial,  caressing  beauty.  Seeking 
to  prove  nothing,  making  no  appeal  to  our 
logical  intellects,  requiring  of  us  no  activity, 
saying  nothing  of  aught  beyond  itself,  it  is 
supremely  restful.  Finding  us  defeated  in  our 
search  for  rationality,  it  says,  "  Search  no  longer, 
puzzle  no  more ;  merely  listen  and  look ;  see, 
here  it  is  !  "  Its  beauty  answers  our  problems 
213 


FROM        GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

never    directly,  but   by   gently  making   them 
irrelevant. 

Art,  then,  differs  from  morality,  philosophy, 
love  and  religion,  in  that  it  presents  directly  to 
sense  thevarietyin  unity  which  they  manifest  only 
to  the  mind  and  spirit.  Like  them,  it  deals  with 
life,  but  the  unity  that  it  attains  by  selection 
and  exclusion  is  unlike  their  unity  in  being 
tangible.  Made  by  man,  it  has  this  one  su- 
preme advantage,  that  it  is  adapted  from  the 
outset  to  his  needs.  What  it  cannot  unify  it 
can  exclude.  Though  nature  care  nothing  for 
the  peculiarities  of  the  eye,  a  landscape  painter 
can  omit  a  tree  that  upsets  the  balance  of  his 
composition.  Actual  men  and  women  present 
all  sorts  of  incongruities  of  figure,  but  the  sculp- 
tor can  suppress  the  stooping  shoulders,  the 
knobby  hips,  and  the  bandy  legs.  Language 
bristles  with  trivial  and  vulgar  words,  but  no 
poet  except  Walt  Whitman  thinks  it  necessary 
to  write  about  hatters,  who  cannot,  according  to 
Stevenson,  "  be  tolerated  in  emotional  verse." 
Out  of  the  infinite  number  of  sounds  that  be- 
siege our  natural  ears,  musicians  have  selected 
about  ninety  definite  tones,  preordained  to  con- 
gruity,  with   which   to  weave  their    marvelous 

2X4 


THE        MEANING        OF         MUSIC 

fabric.  That  is  ever  the  method  of  art ;  it  ex- 
cludes the  irrelevant  or  the  discordant,  in  order 
to  secure  a  salient  and  pure  integrity.  By- 
sacrificing  something  of  the  richness  of  experi- 
ence, it  gains  a  rationality  unknown  in  experi- 
ence. Browning's  Pippa  is  a  gentle,  noble  soul, 
bringing  goodness  everywhere  ;  in  real  life  she 
would  be- a  poor  mill-girl  insulted  by  a  thousand 
sordid  and  accidental  details.  Shelley  portrays 
Beatrice  Cenci  in  the  transfiguring  light  of  po- 
etic truth ;  actual  experience  would  show  her 
tortured  by  a  sinister  and  ignoble  fate.  No 
Greek  youth  could  have  matched  the  perfect 
plastic  beauty  of  the  Disk-thrower,  and  no 
Italian  woman  ever  symbolized  cruel,  sphinx- 
like loveliness  as  does  the  Mona  Lisa.  Corot's 
nature  is  grayer  and  softer  and  more  harmonious 
than  ever  existed  on  earth.  And  such  songs  as 
Schumann's  "  Ich  Grolle  Nicht "  and  Tschai- 
kowsky's  "  Nur  Wer  die  Sehnsucht  Kennt " 
pulsate  with  a  passion  as  intense  but  far  less 
torn  and  fragmentary  than  that  by  which  they 
were  inspired.  This  serene  perfection,  which 
wraps  like  a  mantle  all  works  of  genuine  art, 
results  from  harmonious  organization,  and  is 
attained  only  by  excluding  the  irrelevancies  al- 

ai5 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

ways  present  in  nature.  Whistler  is  wise  as 
well  as  witty  when  he  exclaims  that  "  to  ask 
the  painter  to  copy  nature  as  he  sees  it  is  to  in- 
vite the  pianist  to  sit  on  the  keyboard."  Were 
there,  to  be  sure,  a  perfect  adjustment  between 
nature  and  our  faculties,  were  we  able  to  dis- 
cern the  unity  that  must  exist  even  in  the  in- 
finitely complex  Whole  of  the  world,  then  such  a 
dictum  would  be  outgrown,  and  selection  would 
cease  to  be  the  procedure  of  art.  But  until  we 
have  grown  to  possess  universal  synthetic  power 
art  will  have  its  solacing  mission  and  its  select- 
ive method  as  now. 

Meanwhile  it  will  have  also,  of  course,  its 
inevitable  limitations.  If  it  be  more  orderly 
than  nature,  it  will  be  far  less  rich  and  various  ; 
effects  that  nature  presents  in  a  bewildering 
drench  of  experience,  a  work  of  art  will  have  to 
isolate  and  develop  alone.  A  pictured  land- 
scape, however  perfect,  is  but  one  phase  of  the 
reality;  in  nature  there  is  ceaseless  play  and 
change,  mood  succeeds  mood,  and  the  charm  is 
more  than  half  in  the  wayward  flux  and  trans- 
formation. A  portrait  shows  but  one  character ; 
a  human  face  is  a  whole  gallery  of  personalities. 
The  wealth  of  experience  excites  even  while  it 

zi6 


THE       MEANING       OF        MUSIC 

bewilders  us,  and  when  we  turn  to  the  work  of  art 
we  unconsciously  adopt  a  narrower  standard. 
Primitive  art  especially  impresses  us  as  bare  and 
denuded,  because  the  primitive  artist  has  neither 
technical  skill  nor  synthetic  power  of  thought 
to  combine  more  than  a  few  elements.  Thus 
early  painting  and  sculpture,  in  deahng  with  the 
human  figure,  carry  delineation  little  further 
than  to  show  man  with  head  and  body,  two 
legs  and  two  arms.  Refinements  of  contour 
and  proportion  are  left  to  be  observed  by  later 
artists.  Similarly  the  folk  ballads  in  which 
poetry  takes  its  origin  confine  themselves  to 
elementary  incidents  and  emotions.  In  general, 
rudimentary  art  is  always  so  far  behind  nature  as 
to  seem  to  have  hardly  any  connection  with  it 
at  all. 

As  time  goes  on,  however,  art  passes  through 
an  evolution,  becoming  gradually  more  potent 
in  Its  treatment  of  reality.  Its  progress  takes 
the  form  of  a  curious  zigzag,  the  resultant 
of  two  alternating  tendencies ;  what  hap- 
pens is  something  like  this.  For  a  while  it 
develops  its  power  of  synthesis  (a  power  de- 
pendent both  upon  technical  skill  in  handling 
material  and  on  organizing  force  of  thought) 

ai7 


FROMGRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

until  it  is  able  to  present  a  few  simple  factors  of 
effect  in  clear,  salient  unity.  This  is  what  is 
called  a  period  of  classicism.  Then,  dissatisfied 
with  its  attainment,  desiring  a  richer  reflection 
of  the  great  whirl  of  experience,  it  reaches  out 
after  novel  effects ;  its  vision  is  for  a  while  more 
extended  than  clear,  and,  presenting  many 
effects  which  it  cannot  yet  unify,  it  becomes 
brilliant,  suggestive,  fragmentary,  turgid,  in- 
choate. There  has  been  a  sacrifice  of  the  old 
simple  clarity  for  a  richer  chaos,  or,  in  the  trite 
terminology,  a  romantic  movement.  Now, 
however,  technical  skill  and  synthetic  power  of 
thought  again  advance,  and  a  new  and  com- 
plexer  order  supervenes  on  the  temporary  con- 
fusion. Unity  of  effect  is  regained,  art  is  classic 
once  more  (but  with  increased  wealth  of  mean- 
ing), and  the  time  is  ripe  for  another  burst  of 
romanticism.  By  this  alternation  of  impulses 
art  grows,  and  when  either  tendency  is  defective 
we  have  a  diseased  art.  If  there  be  no  roman- 
tic movement,  if  art  remains  contented  with  its 
acquired  scope,  there  is  stagnation,  pedantry, 
academicism ;  if  there  be  no  classical  period  of 
assimilation,  we  have  vagueness  and  turgidity, 
qualities  even  more  fatal,  since,  as  we  have  seen, 

zi8 


THE        MEANING       OF         MUSIC 

the  justification  of  art  is  its  power  to  clarify. 
The  general  formula  for  wholesome  artistic  ad- 
vance might,  then,  run  thus  :  "  Increase  in  the 
variety  of  the  selected  elements,  without  loss  of 
the  ideal  unity  imposed  upon  them."  And  the 
ideal  goal  of  art  is  a  representation  of  the  whole 
of  life,  stamped  widT^mplete  unity. 

Turning  now  to  music,  we  must  point  out 
that,  although  it  has  in  a  general  way  under- 
gone a  development  like  that  of  the  other  arts, 
made  up  of  alternating  classic  and  romantic 
movements,  it  has  had  from  the  first  certain  ad- 
vantages over  them  in  the  struggle  for  richness 
and  clarity,  advantages  proceeding  from  its  fun- 
damental nature.  For  tones  are  unique  in  our 
mental  experience  as  being  at  once  more  directly 
expressive  of  the  emotional  essence  of  life  than 
any  other  art-material,  and  more  susceptible  of 
orderly  structure. 

That  music  is  beyond  all  the  other  arts  directly 
expressive  of  man's  deeper  passional  life  scarcely 
needs  theoretic  proof;  the  fact  is  in  the  expe- 
rience of  every  one  who  has  listened  to  a  mili- 
tary band,  to  a  homely  song  lovingly  rendered, 
or  to  a  ragged  Hungarian  with  a  violin.  These 
things  take  a  physical  grip  upon  our  emotions, 
119 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

they  stir  our  diaphragms,  galvanize  our  spines, 
and  compel  us  to  shiver,  laugh  or  weep.  Com- 
bined with  such  physical  affections,  moreover, 
are  ideas  of  indescribable  vividness  and  poi- 
gnancy. Joy  and  grief,  hope  and  despair,  se- 
renity, aspiration,  and  horror,  fill  our  hearts  as 
we  listen  to  music.  They  come  in  their  pure 
essence — not  as  qualities  of  something  else. 
And  this  is  what  is  meant  by  the  familiar  state- 
ment that  the  other  arts  are  representative  while 
music  is  presentative.  Poetry,  painting,  and 
sculpture  show  us  things  outside  ourselves,  joy- 
ful or  grievous  things  perhaps,  hopeful  or  des- 
perate or  beautiful  or  ugly  things,  but  still 
things.  But  music  shows  us  nothing  but  the 
qualities,  the  disembodied  feelings,  the  passional 
essences.  Let  the  reader  recall  for  a  moment  the 
effects  of  painting  or  of  poetry,  the  way  in  which 
they  present  emotion.  Is  it  not  always  by  sym- 
bolism, by  indirection  ?  Does  not  the  feeling 
merely  exhale  from  the  object  instead  of  con- 
stituting the  object  as  it  does  in  music  ?  In 
looking  at  a  pastoral  landscape,  for  instance,  do 
we  not  first  think  of  the  peaceful  scene  repre- 
sented, and  only  secondarily  feel  serenity  itself? 
In  reading  "  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci "  is  it 


THE        MEANING       OF         MUSIC 

not  only  by  a  process  of  associative  thought 
that  we  come  to  shudder  with  a  sense  of  un- 
earthly and  destructive  passion  ?  Yes,  in  the 
representative  arts  emotion  is  merely  adjective ; 
in  music  alone  is  it  substantive.  We  see  in  a 
portrait  a  lovely  woman ;  we  behold  in  marble 
a  noble  youth  ;  we  read  in  poetry  a  desperate 
story ;  in  music,  on  the  contrary,  we  hear  love, 
nobility,  despair.  And  since  this  emotional  life 
is  the  deepest  reality  we  know,  since  our  intui- 
tions constitute  in  fact  the  very  essence  of  that 
world-spirit  which  is  but  projected  and  symbol- 
ized in  sky,  sun,  ocean,  stars,  and  earth,  music 
cannot  but  be  a  richer  record  of  our  ultimate 
life  than  those  arts  which  deal  with  objects  and 
symbols  alone.  It  is  the  penetration,  the  ul- 
timacy,  of  music  that  gives  it  such  extraordin- 
ary power.  The  other  arts  excel  it  in  definite- 
ness,  in  concreteness,  in  the  ability  to  delineate 
a  scene  or  tell  a  story ;  but  music  surpasses 
them  all  in  power  to  present  the  naked  and  basic 
facts  of  existence,  the  essential,  informing  pas- 
sions. 

A  secondary  and  subordinate  advantage  of 
music  proceeds  from  the  nature  of  its  material. 
Tones,  produced  and  controlled  by  man,  are  far 


FROM        GRIEG       TO        BRAHMS 

more  easily  stamped  with  the  unity  he  desires 
than  the  objects  of  external  nature.  These  are 
stubborn  outer  facts,  created  without  regard  to 
the  aesthetic  sense,  and  in  a  thousand  ways  un- 
amenable to  it.  The  great  dazzle  of  sunlight  is 
too  keen  for  human  eyes,  which  perceive  better 
on  dim,  gray  days  ;  many  of  nature's  contours 
are  larger  than  we  can  grasp.  Every  painter  will 
tell  you  that  there  are  inharmonious  colors  in 
the  sunset,  and  one  daring  critic  has  gone  so  far 
as  to  impugn  the  "  vulgarity  of  outline  "  of  the 
American  hills.  It  matters  not  whether  the 
maladjustment  indicate  a  fault  in  nature  or  a 
limitation  in  man  ;  the  point  to  note  is  that  the 
representative  arts  deal  with  a  material  less  pli- 
able than  tones.  Words,  the  material  of  poetry, 
occupy  in  this  respect  a  curious  intermediate 
position.  Like  tones,  they  are  man-made,  but, 
like  outer  objects,  they  are  '*  given,"  fixed  and 
indocile  to  man's  aesthetic  needs.  (We  remem- 
ber the  example  of  the  "  hatter.")  Though 
made  by  man,  in  fact,  they  are  made  not  by  his 
aesthetic  but  by  his  practical  energy.  They 
were  devised,  not  for  beautiful  adjustment,  but 
to  convey  thoughts,  and  when  the  poet  comes 
and  uses  them  to  make  an  art  he  finds  them 


THE        MEANING       OF         MUSIC 

almost  as  perverse  as  the  painter's  trees  and 
hills.  Tones,  however,  have  no  practical  util- 
ity whatever ;  not  only  do  they  not  exist  out- 
side of  music,  but  they  would  be  of  no  use  if 
they  did.  Hence  they  may  be  chosen  and 
grouped  by  the  free  aesthetic  sense  alone,  acting 
without  let  or  hindrance,  except  what  is  imposed 
by  the  thing  to  be  expressed.  For  hundreds  of 
years  man  has  been  testing  and  comparing,  ac- 
cepting and  rejecting,  the  elements  of  the  tonal 
series,  with  the  result  that  we  have  to-day  the 
ladder  or  scale  of  ninety-odd  definitely  fixed 
tones,  out  of  which  all  music  is  composed. 
And  though  the  series  has  been  developed 
wholly  by  instinct,  and  it  is  only  within  the  last 
half-century  that  the  natural  laws  underlying  it 
have  been  discovered,  yet  it  has  been  built  up 
so  slowly  and  tentatively,  and  with  so  sure  and 
delicate  a  sense  of  its  internal  structure,  that  it 
is  an  unsurpassable  basis  for  complex  and  yet 
perfectly  harmonious  tone-combinations.  In  a 
word,  the  material  of  music  is  by  origin  self- 
congruous,  fitted  to  clear  structure,  preordained 
to  an  order  at  once  rich  and  transparent. 

Preordained  to  beauty,  then,  is  the  musician's 
material :  and  yet  the  musician  is  not  exempted 
223 


FROM       GRIEG       TO       BRAHMS 

from  the  difficulties  of  his  brother  artists.  If 
they  work  in  a  less  plastic  material,  he  has  to 
govern  subtler  and  more  wayward  forces.  He 
can  attain  a  wonderful  perfection,  but  only 
through  unremitting  labor.  His  task  is  to  em- 
body the  turbulent,  irrational  human  feelings  in 
serene  and  beautiful  forms.  He  is  to  master 
the  dominating,  to  reconcile  the  warring,  to  im- 
pose unity  on  the  diverse  and  the  repellant. 
Mozart  and  Haydn  might  handle  their  art  with 
ready  ease,  because  their  emotions  were  naive ; 
but  Beethoven,  who  essayed  to  look  into  the 
stormy  and  tortured  heart  of  man,  found  him- 
self involved  in  a  travail  Titanic  and  intermin- 
able. Nevertheless  he  did  succeed  in  harness- 
ing the  vast  forces  with  which  he  deals,  and  his 
success  is  as  conclusive  a  vindication  as  we 
could  desire  of  music's  power  to  deal  with  its 
profound  verities.  When  we  think  of  Bee- 
thoven's immortal  works,  immortal  both  by 
their  strength  and  by  their  beauty,  can  we 
doubt  that  music  expresses  our  deepest  emo- 
tional nature  with  unrivalled  fullness,  and  yet 
so  reconciles  it  with  itself  as  to  symbolize  our 
highest  spiritual  peace  ? 

From  the  swelter  and  jungle  of  experience 
224 


THE        MEANING       OF       MUSIC 

in  which  it  is  our  lot  to  pass  our  mortal  days, 
days  which  philosophy  cannot  make  wholly 
rational,  nor  love  wholly  capable  of  service,  nor 
religion  wholly  serene,  we  are  thus  privileged 
to  emerge,  from  time  to  time,  into  fairer  realms. 
Tantalized  with  an  unattainable  vision  of  order, 
we  turn  to  art,  and  especially  to  music,  for 
assurance  that  our  hope  is  not  wholly  chi- 
merical.    Then 

**  Music  pours  on  mortak 
Its  beautiful  disdain." 

Disdainful  it  is,  truly,  because  it  reminds  us 
of  the  discord  and  the  rhythmless  onmarch  of 
our  days.  It  voices  the  passions  that  have  torn 
and  mutilated  and  stung  and  blinded  us ;  we 
meditate  the  foolishness,  the  fatality,  of  our 
chaotic  lives.  But  beautiful  it  is  also  ;  and  it  has 
been  wisely  said  that  beauty  offers  us  "  a  pledge 
of  the  possible  conformity  of  the  soul  with  na- 
ture." Music,  at  once  disdainful  and  beautiful, 
shows  us  our  deepest  feelings,  so  wayward  and 
tragic  in  experience,  merged  into  ineifable  per- 
fection. 


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